The photos, texts, playlists and to-do lists that we find after loved ones die can offer poignant glimpses into their lives.
A few months after my stepfather died, I stumbled upon the Photos app on his old iPad. Jeff was not much of a photographer - and his photos proved it. As I flipped through, I saw images that mostly seemed to have been taken inadvertently, like close-ups of his feet. But Jeff was gone and I wanted more, so I kept looking.
Among accidental screengrabs, I found photos he took while lying down. Was Jeff — our curmudgeon who spent his free time reading civil war tomes — taking selfies in the hospital? I kept going. I found image after image of my mother, standing in their kitchen or bedroom, posing in different outfits. She had presumably asked Jeff to photograph her so she could decide what to wear, and he obliged.
The more I looked, the more I found sweet moments of my mother. Images of her petting Jeff’s cats, which she insisted she didn’t care about. Others of his cats snuggled up against her. I found a series of my mother painting wildflowers at their favourite lake in Maine. Jeff had captured her from every angle.
Finding these photos, even the awkward feet ones, brought me comfort. The images were both predictable and surprising — reinforcing everything I knew about who my stepfather was, while also showing me more.
When older generations died, families would go through old photo albums and boxes of belongings. Now, when a loved one dies, we have so much more to pore over from their life — text messages, emails, to-do lists, playlists, voicemails. These digital artefacts contain life’s spontaneity and chance. They show us details and small moments that we may have otherwise missed.
We asked readers to tell us about the digital scraps they found after a loved one passed away. Here is a selection of their responses, which have been edited for clarity.
He was not a sentimental man
After her partner of 16 years died, in April 2013, Linda Lee in San Francisco found a reminder note he had written on an iPad app that said, ” Remind Linda I love her.”
After Tom passed, I found an entry in the Reminder app on his iPad. It just floored me. I never thought he used it — he wasn’t a techy kind of person. I doubled over in tears upon finding it.
He was not a sentimental man. He gave me cards that said “XOXO,” and things like that. But he never really said, “I love you,” verbally.
This was the nicest gift ever from him; a forever gift to be cherished the rest of my life.
I had never thought about capturing his voice
Sharon Koppel in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, lost her husband, Jeff, in 2020. He was 73.
I had no recordings of Jeff’s voice after he died. Then I stumbled upon a video of him riding his bike to our local YMCA and sharing why exercise and his friends there were important to him, in his deep, gentle, kind voice. I smiled at the T-shirt he had on: a cartoon of a dog with drinking glasses and the words, “I make pour decisions.”
We were together for almost 30 years. I had two prior marriages that were not the best, so meeting Jeff was like meeting my soulmate. Every day was fun.
He had contracted Cushing’s syndrome eight years before, and it had a debilitating effect on his body and muscles and all kinds of stuff. He decided he would sign up for the local YMCA, and he became a regular, riding his bike five days a week to his class.
They made the video as part of a fundraising campaign many years ago, and I hadn’t thought about it in so long. He was in remission and doing so well, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. After seven weeks in hospice care, he died.
He died at home, and it was just so busy. About a month after he died, someone asked me if I had saved any of his voicemails. I had been so preoccupied that I didn’t even think about it. I got all the photos, but I had never thought about capturing his voice.
I ran into the head of the YMCA down at the grocery store, and I asked her if, by any chance, they had any video of Jeff talking. She said, “Sure, we have that video from the campaign,” and I just burst into tears.
Our secret language
Allison Reeves in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, lost her younger brother, Jimmy, when he was 25. He died after a bike accident in Taiwan more than a decade ago.
I found the last email that I wrote to my brother before his accident. I was bored on a Friday afternoon at work and had written to him: “I love you like a fat kid loves cake. I do!” which was like our secret language for expressing our love for one another.
After he died, my parents gave me his computer, where I stumbled upon an app to see his email. I did not remember sending the message until the moment I saw it in his email inbox. I was surprised how glad I was to have sent the email, to have seen that he read it, to know that I said everything I needed to say before his accident.
A sight I had seen every evening
Sarah Chute in Toronto stumbled upon a photo of her father on an old web forum.
Among his many creative accomplishments, my late father, Harvey Chute, ran two forums in the late aughts: one, for users of Microsoft Zune, called Zunerama, and another, for Kindle users, called Kboards. He had so many hobbies he pursued on his own like this, including authoring a young adult historical novel and playing guitar. But he would still involve us in small related projects, such as filming unboxing videos of us as children opening up Zune accessories. Before he passed away, in 2015, he taught my mother, sisters and me the inner workings of running a forum. This gave us a newfound appreciation for all his years of hard work that we had witnessed and dismissed as “just Papa’s hobby.”
Earlier this year, I googled his name, hoping to find an audio clip or interview with him that I hadn’t discovered before. I added “zune” to make my search query more specific and came across a stranger’s post on another site documenting a day at Zune HQ for Microsoft Valued Professionals, a title he was awarded in recognition of the success of Zunerama. I scrolled down and was touched to see a photo of a group of geeks working in a small boardroom. On the right end of the table, the comforting, familiar sight of my dad’s bald head and gaze focused on his laptop brought me a flood of emotion. It was a sight I had seen every evening in our family room when he would tinker away on the back end of forums he developed during the off-hours of his day job.
Somehow, knowing that he joined a group of strangers to gather for a day — and that they witnessed his mannerisms, his nerdy hobby, his gentle curiosity, his mild pleasantries, and, undoubtedly, one of his clever jokes — made me aware of the scope of lives that he touched, and it was a comforting reminder that his memory lives on in quaint and unexpected ways.
Decoding a piece of the past
Madeline de Figueiredo in Houston lost her husband, Eli Aperin, in November 2021. He was 25.
I found an email in my spouse Eli’s inbox that was dated from the night of our first kiss in 2017. He had sent himself a message in Japanese that night with the note: “Prediction: Marry Madeline …”
We had been good friends for years, but I was a bit overwhelmed when our relationship took a turn for the romantic. Three years later, we married.
Eighteen months after that, Eli died suddenly in an accident.
Finding this email in his inbox was like decoding a piece of the past and discovering a new moment in our love story: Eli knew it was me from the beginning. What a gift to receive from him in the early weeks of grief.
I really believed before this happened that once someone dies, that is the end of your relationship. After finding this, I felt like I was getting to know him better, even after he was gone.
Discovering another side to Dad
Carolina Ramirez in Denver lost her father in December. After he died, she found a playlist he had created.
Losing our dad was one of the hardest things we had gone through. We lost him pretty suddenly. He was diagnosed with oesophagal cancer last May, and we lost him in December. We assumed we’d have more time.
In our attempt to find mementoes of him after he passed, my sister remembered his Spotify account and quickly played his 2022 Spotify Wrapped playlist. It felt like we were able to glimpse a hidden side of Dad on his long rides in traffic, as he travelled from house to house for his work as a painter. To our surprise, our Mexican-born immigrant dad loved old-school country music, and his most-played artist was Dolly Parton.
My mum, sister and I sobbed and laughed as we huddled around his phone, playing a glimpse of his final year with us. We curated a playlist for his graveside burial service and then listened to a time capsule of his favourite songs as they lowered his casket. We can now keep this playlist with us and remember the incredibly quirky, goofy and proud man that was our father.
Te quiero mucho, Papa.
Before the trouble started
Priscilla Dickerman in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, lost her brother, Malcolm, a year ago. He was 62.
My brother died this past spring. He overdosed after years of homelessness, which was due to a mix of head trauma, family trauma, mental illness and addiction.
My brother had a hard life; some of his troubles were from crappy life circumstances, many were from his own questionable choices. But he was a very caring and sweet soul, and I loved him.
A few months later, I found a voicemail on my phone from him, left at a time when I had blocked him because he was quite toxic and out of control. The message was so sweet, so loving, so thoughtful.
His message is both comforting and painful for me to hear. It was from the tender soul that my brother held way deep inside himself, the part that few besides me would recognise, from long ago when we were kids, before the trouble started. And it has helped carry me through the pain of his loss.
Were there other moments like that?
Mike Johnson in Cave Creek, Arizona, lost his mother in August 2020. After she died, his brother found an image on their father’s computer.
Our mother was a loving control freak who did not have much of a sense of humour. So it’s hard to imagine what would have caused her to lose it in this picture.
I had known her for 60 years, and I had not known her to laugh very much. She was very task-oriented, just not a free spirit. And then to see this picture of both she and my dad just losing it — it was, like, “Wow, what was it that prompted that reaction?” I hadn’t seen her laugh like that for anything. I had seen her chuckle, but I never saw her lose control laughing so hard.
It sticks with you. You go, “Wow, were there other moments like that that we just didn’t know about?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Hanna Ingber and Leo Dominguez
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES