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 the emergency room threw us, but of course, we went. That was on a Saturday. By Monday, he was moved to the ICU. On Wednesday he was transferred to a different hospital altogether.

Meanwhile, the new computer continued to sit in its box, unopened for weeks, while Joel fell into a coma, and ultimately died of complications of West Nile Virus. All of this is recounted in my memoir, Widowish (Little A, 2021) as is the fact that somehow, miraculously, life has moved forward for both my daughter and me. My daughter was thirteen when she lost her father, she’s now 22. I am re-partnered with a wonderful and patient man who makes space for Joel time and time again. Life is full and good, we’re happy, but this many years later, the grief still haunts me.

I have a friend who has a master’s degree in spirituality psychology. She once told me that letting go of our belongings — everything from photos to high school yearbooks to material possessions we find meaningful — is considered “high level spirituality.” The truth is, I have very little that I’ve held on to since Joel’s death. When I downsized from our 4-bedroom house to a much smaller townhouse down the street, I got rid of everything. CD’s, records, books, furniture, artwork, clothing and more, was all donated or given to friends and family. It was easy for me to do, perhaps because Joel’s death proved that when we leave this world, we take nothing with us. Nothing! I had proof of this every time I looked in our closet and saw the clothes he would never wear again, or in the bathroom where his toothbrush still touched mine, or how his shoes were left by the front door, bereft of a purpose. His things were suddenly rendered useless in a way I couldn’t tolerate, so passing them forward provided a comfort of sorts. It helped me to heal.

But still, there’s this computer. Joel knew about it, of course, but he never saw it out of the box. He never created his own profile. He never touched the keyboard. Perhaps because of a shared iCloud account, this device holds Joel’s iTunes, photos from his iPhone, and some of his work emails. Joel, like all of us, lived a life, some of which is held in this desktop that barely functions. I can’t help but be attached to it, even though I know it’s time.

In some ways, it’s one of the last things of Joel’s that I have, but it never was one of his things in the first place… like the “Big Lebowski” bobble head that amused him so much, that I now keep on a shelf in my closet. Or the beloved fly ball that he caught at a Dodgers game, encased in a see-through plastic box. Or the contents of his nightstand: a book, a pair of reading glasses, and an old notebook with some of his scribble (it’s the scribble I cherish the most!). As mundane as these things are, and different from his clothes… his toothbrush… his shoes…, they belonged to Joel, and that is enough for me to want to keep them. High level spirituality be damned.

I know the time has come to make space, literally and figuratively. I’ve googled how to wipe the computer clean. I’ve transferred what I needed to and am one step away from making this device another permanent loss. I’ll remove the faded love notes that have been taped there from the beginning and keep them in a special place. Maybe I am sentimental after all.

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Melissa Gould is the author of Widowish, A Memoir, an Amazon Best Seller and a Goodreads Top Book of 2021. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Hollywood Reporter, Buzzfeed and more. More info can be found www.widowish.com.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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