(this post liable to change after I reread it a few times)

Lately, I’ve been working to close Uncle Don’s email account, which involved sorting through 8,000+ messages to see if there was anything that should be kept. The vast majority his inbox was stuffed with junkmail, but in between ads for cheep medications and penis enlargement devices, I read a handful of emails to and from real people—mostly family members. Whenever I find a real message I feel that I’m walking a tightrope between scanning to see if it should be kept and respecting his privacy. It’s a strange dichotomy. Actually, every time I log into his account I get this sort of melancholy voyeuristic feeling marked occasionally by sudden glimpses into the private life of somebody I’ve always considered to be an extraordinary human being. It’s a task I find both comforting and uncomfortable, pleasant and unpleasant.

The more I think about what I’m doing, the more I think that it is a process of taking another person’s memories and freezing them forever in an electronic ice that consists at it’s very base not of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, but as ones and zeros that I will never actually touch, just as I will never again touch Don. I may not have him physically, but will retain my own memories, my own organic ones and zeros. It’s also a process that helps force me to accept the fact that I will never see Don again. I will never spend another lazy Sunday afternoon in Ypsilanti, eating whatever gourmet-esk takeout Don happens to recommend; will never spend another weekend night between semesters on his couch; never watch a movie from his bed or play poker on his porch in the dark.