My Husband Died Almost Ten Years Ago and Our Computer Still Haunts Me
I have an iMac computer that sits on my desk. It contains photos, contacts, home movies, and everything from business documents to drafts of everything I’ve ever written since I first turned it on nearly a decade ago. But in the time it’s taken me to write this many words, it is still trying to open a new window in Chrome. The wireless keyboard and mouse are no longer recognized, and it hasn’t been able to do a system upgrade since Mojave circa 2018. I don’t consider myself a sentimental person, but I’ve been struggling with letting go of this computer for quite some time. I have faded love notes taped to it from Joel, my late husband, and a graduation gift wish-list from my daughter that’s either from middle or high school even though she graduated from college last year.
I bought this Mac in late 2013. It sat in a box for a week that October, during which time I braced myself for setting it up — newer, faster, shinier than the previous desktop I was eager to get rid of. I was going to give myself the weekend to plug it in, set it up and figure out all its bells and whistles. But my husband, who had MS, was suffering that week with what we thought was a bad cold, possibly the flu. After a few nights of an unrelenting fever, his doctors said to take him to the emergency room. While we were fluent in MS, the idea of going to…
