Digital Un-Dead

My sister died in 2004. But to look at my calendar updates, you'd never know it. She's in my Amazon address book (several times -- she had a tendency to move), she's in my cell phone contacts, her birthday reminder pops up on my Palm Pilot. My Hotmail account has a Carolla folder, named for my sister. I still have an e-mail she sent me on my birthday in 2001. Before 9/11. Before she was diagnosed with cancer.

We of the technorati age have a back-to-the-future problem. Our gadgets sometimes work a little too well. With their hard-drive memories efficiently backed up, it's my real-life memories that are hard to get rid of. And even harder to hold on to.

There's something so immediate about computer-age ephemera that I am sometimes tempted to call her cell phone number. I can't quite manage to do it. But I can't make myself delete it, either.