“My Daughter Died at 32. My Devices Won’t Let Me Rest.”

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MY CAR’S BLUETOOTH asks if I’d like to connect to “Miranda’s iPhone.”

Facebook pings me with “memories”: photo carousels of my adult daughter and me on a beach or posing for goofy selfies.

Miranda’s name appears on my list of “favorite” numbers on my phone. A shared streaming account offers recommendations that cater to Miranda’s high-low tastes: a historical drama, and the new season of “Real Housewives.”

Then there’s my Amazon account, which lists Miranda’s shipping address in Brooklyn.

But Miranda is not in Brooklyn. She died in February, 2024, at the age of 32. Her body was found in her bedroom. She’d collapsed suddenly sometime during the previous night, we’d later learn from complications from a rare brain tumor removed five years earlier. After the surgery, her neurosurgeon had assured us she would live a long and healthy life.

Every time her ghost pops up on a device, my heart is ripped anew.

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Eventually I would be able to steel myself to enter a grocery store again, and other places where we had spent time together. But these were decisions I could make on my own when I felt ready.

The digital haunting I had no control over.

There you are, going about your day, maybe even thinking to yourself, “Hey, I’m OK right now!” Then: We thought you’d like to remember what you were doing on this day in 2018.

No. No. I really don’t! But I can’t look away.

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THE IRONY OF the unwanted notifications is that big tech adamantly blocks access to the data we do want.

When my husband David and I received Miranda’s computer and iPhone, we had no idea what her passwords were. Neither did her siblings. Nor did her best friends. We tried dozens of combinations of Ringo, her dog’s name (the prompt clue was “roommate and best friend”). Nothing worked. We remained locked out.

Miranda’s will named David as executor. David reached out to Apple. He reached out to Google. He reached out to AT&T, her phone carrier. Each responded as if we were hackers trying to steal her credit card.

No, Apple would not help us log in to her MacBook. No, Google would not allow us access to her Gmail. No, AT&T would not help us unlock her phone or release her texts. You’ll need a court order, they kept telling us.

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In the end, David had to go to Brooklyn Surrogate Court and seek a series of orders. Each company dictated its own wording about what the order must say. Apple gave us her photos but nothing else. Google gave us metadata, recipients, dates and subject lines of her emails, but no content. AT&T outright refused to unlock her phone.

Our lawyer thought another round of orders might yield better results. But the delay, the expense and, let’s face it, the heartache, defeated us. We would have to rest content with the photos. When we at last opened those, maybe 80% were of Ringo.

THUS I’M LEFT with the tomb of a hard drive, holding the little we could recover. Miranda’s iPhone and MacBook sit on a bookshelf, mute and unyielding, like storage lockers with lost keys. I’ll never know what’s in them.

Meanwhile, the reminders I never asked for keep coming. The things I would give anything to see are denied to me.

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