An Electronic Memory Trail
My dad is visiting.
He is sitting on the couch, scrolling through his phone, talking about how he tries to stay out of politics on Facebook, then posts a meme about politics. On Facebook. I smile as I flip the sausages, part of the breakfast that I make when he comes to visit. It’s tradition, kind of a ‘student becomes the master’ switch from when my brother and I used to visit him. Breakfast is most definitely our thing.
My kids play around him. The T.V. is on, he’s relaxing after traveling. He’d just gotten here. I consider telling him to put down his phone and get off Facebook, but something in the kitchen catches my eye, and I stop.
It’s a picture of me, my cousins, my grandma, my brother, and my now husband sitting on the couch, some of us holding glasses of wine, smiling. My mom is taking the picture, so she’s not in it. It’s grainy, kind of stained; taken with an actual camera, not a phone camera. There is a time stamp on the bottom right corner telling me the picture was taken in 2008. Twelve years ago.
It’s part of a kind of altar. There is a sign next to the picture, calling, “Here Comes the Sun!” to whomever’s eye it catches. It is there because my cousin sent it to me after my mom passed, knowing it was a favorite song of hers. I can’t hear that song without thinking of my mother. There’s a wine glass, her last Christmas present from me, about being the world’s best grandma, which she never got to be. It’s never been opened. There’s also a candle, given to me after another loss, a reminder that my mother and my daughter are together right now; at least, she gets to be a grandma on the other side.
This picture also reminds me that I have no real recent pictures of my mother. It’s not surprising, since she died five years ago. But even in my memories on social media, only two pictures of her ever pop up. On Google Photos, my “On This Day” never includes her. Everything I have of her is past, and that is how it will always be now. But it’s also, for the most part, only in my memories. She never had a phone that took and stored pictures, and she didn’t visit often. She never got into Facebook, so visiting her page after her death wouldn’t allow for a real walk down memory lane. She was a disposable camera type of person. If I’d gone through her apartment after death, I’m sure I’d have found countless undeveloped disposable cameras.
My dad, on the other hand, appears in countless pictures on my phone. Not only is he in pictures with me and my family, he re-posts them on his own Facebook account. He also posts an endless stream of ‘dad’ jokes, silly sayings, and ‘back in the day’ memories. He reminds me, “Hey, don’t let me forget to get a picture of ______ while I’m there.” And then he posts it on Facebook.
So as I watch him flip through Facebook, posting and liking, my urge to tell him to ditch the phone fades. Because my dad is not only building a connection to the world via Facebook, he’s building a connection for us. A connection of thoughts, feelings, important moments and memories in his life that will exist after he is gone. A very small portion of his life and the person he was will be easily accessible to everyone he knew.
My youngest brings him a book and he puts the phone down, picks him up and puts him on his knee. My oldest hears the book beginning and crawls onto the other knee.
Don’t let me forget to have you take a boy on each knee picture, my dad’s voice echoes inside my head. I pick up my phone and snap the picture of the back of their heads, then move around to the front to get a better one.
“Oh! Send that to me! I’ll post it to Facebook! I bet it’ll get 100 likes!” says my dad.
I smile.
© Ashley Jamele 2020
