Digital Echoes

Sipping his morning tea, he scrolled through his phone, a routine pilgrimage to the social media feed. His eye caught the calendar notifications, little blue flags marking the day's special dates. "Send wishes; it's..." The prompt jarred him. ‘Too early in the day to wish any’, and he mentally pushed the task away, but the same reminders echoed across his social platforms: three birthdays. One name, however, brought a sharp, cold recognition: Vik. Vik had been gone for a while now.

The digital reminder was a small, cruel trigger. It drew a long, sorrowful line connecting him to the many others who had departed over the past few years—friends, colleagues, and beloved family members. Some had lived full spans, passing from natural causes. Others were tragically young, swept away by accidents, difficult lifestyle choices, or the merciless wave of the pandemic.

He realized then that their names still populated his contact lists; their timelines remained, ghostly active, in his feeds. "Perhaps it's time to sever these digital ties," he quietly mused. With a sigh, he navigated to his friends list, a desire for closure finally nudging him toward the profiles of the departed—more than a dozen faces now fixed in time.

He started clicking, intending to unlink, to archive the past.

But he couldn't do it.

With each profile he visited, a rush of bittersweet memories overwhelmed the practical need for deletion. There were pictures of shared laughter, nostalgic check-ins from forgotten trips, and inside jokes immortalized in comment threads. This was, he realized with a sudden, aching clarity, the last tangible connection he had left to these cherished people. He had loved their company, valued their friendship, and held onto every shared moment.

A new, warm thought settled over the cold intention of deletion. "Perhaps this isn't a flaw in the system, but a gentle grace," he thought, the early light warming his hands around the mug. "Maybe this is the universe, utilizing the very tools of technology, to gift me a simple, necessary task: to remember them on their days of celebration, and to hold their light a little longer."

The contact lists and friendships remained untouched. He closed his phone, a feeling of deep-seated peace and enduring love replacing the earlier discomfort. He couldn’t  send a message to the departed, but he could greet the day in his own way. In the quiet hope that they too acknowledged that they were fondly remembered.