The iPhone in Grief

Day 1144.

This Device that I carry as if my life depended on it, brings me instant access to my lost boy.

In the earlier months, I would read our text chain over and over. At first to check how we were before he died. Was I terse? Were we enjoying each other? Was I supportive enough? Where were we at?

But now this text chain offers me his voice as if I am listening to his voice as I read, reaching into him, chatting with him, as if the messages had just been sent now.

I envisage him as he texted, what he was doing, what he was feeling, thinking of how he was. It’s all I have.

The photos of him are in my favorites, marked by a heart, I visit often. The videos sent to me, I play over and over, they are the closest thing I have to being in his presence. Some I shot but most have been sent to me by kind souls after he died, some with his voice.

New images sent as someone uncovers them from deep within their archives, an old phone, an abandoned Snapchat account …..are like bumping into him unexpectedly in a shop “Oh! There you are, darling!”. Fresh images are like gold. Because I will never have a fresh sighting in life now.

But then comes the dreaded (and now common) fumble and the phone slips through my hands, hits the ground and ……..shatters. And yes, many in our grief group have iPhones in various degrees of totally fucked.

So there I sit in the Apple store with some poor unsuspecting ‘genius’ once more… Yes, the photos are backed up on a cloud, heating up some lake in a secret location.

“But what about my text chains? I can’t lose my text chains!” I am tetchy, scratchy and anxious.

We all know that feeling when some auto-update unexpectedly, somehow, deletes something you need and nobody seems to know why or where it’s gone.

The ‘genius’ does my transfer to the new phone and I scramble through my text chain to find those golden threads from my boy.

You can’t search his name, it’s too long ago, it won’t come up. I know this now.

The now informed, pale-faced ‘genius’ bates their breath…

“You go to write him a text”, I explain as I tap in his name ……………………………..

and there it is! My precious text chain intact.

Everyone exhales and a tear runs down my cheek at the absurd situation of my life as I hug the new, unshattered, virgin device to my heart. Smiling, crying.

Yes, I can, I am told, download this text chain and archive it somehow, but it’s not the same as flicking it up to devour, when needed, as I go about my day.