A blue bubble appears on your screen. Your Memories, it reads. Would you like to see what you were up to 50 years ago?

Yes. You would.

The montage of your youth begins with a photo of your late husband David smiling in a beer-stained paisley shirt, 23 years young. You were 21, and it was your beer on his shirt. The bar was packed so you were holding the can above your head while you searched for him in the crowd. He snuck up and hugged you from behind, and it spilled all over him. Now, he laughs at the stain on his chest. He teases you for being such a clumsy beer carrier. You never felt at home in crowded bars, but you did feel at home under the gentle massage of his teasing, his words working out the kinks in your nervous mind like trained hands do a body’s. He kisses your cheek.

The photo disappears.

Now, you, in your red cocktail dress, the one you wore until one of the straps frayed and it started to look like a toga, holding a cocktail and leaning on David’s shoulder, a knowing look in your eye. But what did you know back then? That no one dies? That despite what everyone says, life is long? That the future is only a mirage when you’re wandering grief’s desert? Til death do us part. And it did. And you did.

Now, a beautiful bride and groom, feeding each other cake. A bride and a father, dancing like candle flames. A field of champagne flutes. A prayer. It was your best friend Lorena’s first wedding. She’s dead too. Always ahead of the pack, she was the first in your address book to marry, the first to divorce, and the first to die. Your wedding was the following weekend, or was it the weekend after? You’ll see it in Your Memories soon. On this weekend, this one bright weekend 50 years ago, Lorena looks resplendent in her wedding dress, like all the volts at General Electric couldn’t light a room like her. But when did you last see her? You try to recall and can’t. Hopefully it’s stored in Your Memories, though it was sometime in your 40’s and you fear you won’t be around past 90. You click on her name. There she is again, gazing out her profile picture’s window, eternally 32 in the driver’s seat of her blue Toyota convertible.

There was an entire life once, but it disappeared. Gradually at first, then with an acceleration that made you afraid you could forget anything, even gravity. One day, about four years after he died, you woke up and David’s face was gone. You searched your overflowing brain, but you couldn’t picture him. That was six months ago. Since then, you’ve visited his profile every day.

Because this website brings your life back. Facebook keeps you alive.

Now, with no knowledge of how you got there, you’re on David’s profile, a living gravestone you dress with digital flowers—photos, posts, tales from your stunningly international life together. In his timeline photo, stretching across the top of the page like a banner for the abundance of hope found only in youth, he shakes hands with a grinning Jimmy Carter. It’s a shame he made this his timeline photo. The old one showed the two of you in your first home in Tennessee, laying in opposite directions on the misshapen couch, heads side by side, holding your books upside-down for the other to read. He updated his timeline just a week before he died, in a brief bout of nostalgia for his career as a diplomat. Surely, he planned to change it back. You could change it for him—you have his password—but it feels like that would stop the magic’s effect, that logging in as David would kill him.

When you made your profile you wondered what happens to all the dead ones’. But now you know what everyone knows: they stick around. Idyllic, happy ghosts trapped in their Timelines. When you die, you’ll become one too, it’s better than disappearing, but who will be there to type your name into the Search bar each day? Who will make sure you stick around?

There’s your son, Louie. But he thinks social media is unhealthy. He says it’s not built for grieving, that the mechanisms of surveillance capital blah blah blah. His Ivy League education led him away from the real world a while ago. Then there’s Martha, your daughter. She’ll be sad when you’re gone. But you know how she is, her sadness turns her inward. Whenever her heart breaks, she gets under a blanket and suffers privately, waiting for the storm to pass. She doesn’t Share her feelings. No, it won’t be either of your kids. It will have to be a friend. But which one? Lorena’s dead, Zoey’s dead, Michael, Jane, Wilma, all dead. Anne Marie’s still alive but you doubt she has many young photos of you. She was sort of on the fringe in the 70’s. Maybe she would scan some of your old film ones after you die. She likes to reminisce.

Oh, now you remember. Anne Marie died last year. Does this well of grief have a bottom? Each time you dip the bucket in, you forget the water’s poisoned and take another drink. The only people who might help you are your peers here in the retirement home, the other folks who use this computer, they understand the value of sticking around. But you don’t know them. Not enough to ask a favor like this. Excuse me Miss, I know we’ve only had one or two short conversations and they were about the cafeteria food, but since you already spend an hour a day reanimating your dead son’s Facebook profile, when I’m gone do you mind doing that for me too?

Ludicrous. And besides, it happens unconsciously. You were on Lorena’s profile, and now you’re here, staring into his wide brown eyes. Again you look through the funeral album. Again you read the eulogy you left him on his wall the day after he died. Again you tear up.

You lean back in your wheelchair. Your broken hip still hurts. It’s been like this for months, healing imperceptibly, if at all. And now you have new pains in your shoulders, your elbows, your fingers, pretty much anywhere two bones meet. You check the clock on screen. Two hours have passed since you logged in. You think of your friend Francesca. Of all the faces, it’s odd that you recall hers. She used to spend hours a day looking through scrapbooks, journals, handwritten notes, stacks of old photographs, anything that let her hold the past between her fingers. You told her about Facebook, you even made her an account. You visit it now. That simple blue silhouette, universal placeholder for absent people, is framed by her profile picture window. Still no posts. She never liked Facebook. She said she had to touch them to remember them, the Memories. You drifted apart, she into her isolation, you into yours. But yours is different. Yours isn’t really isolation, because you Share it.

Which reminds you. You go back to Your Memories from 50 years ago and post them to your Story. If you don’t do this, they fade, then they’re gone for real. Sharing them, you keep them alive for a bit longer on a curious form of life support. And you Connect.

Not that many people view your Stories, or Comment on them. Occasionally though, one of your kids will Like one. Or cry laughing via emoji, which feels nice. Then they’ll call you and tell you to spend less time online. They’ll say that it’s sad, reposting all these lost moments, day after day. But it’s not sad. What’s sad is getting old, seeing your loved ones die as the great bouquet of your days on Earth withers down to the stems.

Reliving your youth, you can’t be dying. Reliving is still living. It’s in the name. If it means your life is recycled, so what? Whose isn’t?

You’re back on your husband’s page, telling the story of his handshake with Carter in just a few paragraphs, making sure not to get long-winded and lose your potential reader—you do have that tendency, your son tells you—when you feel a tap on your shoulder. A short unshaven man with a hat and cane smiles, showing off some remarkably clean dentures. Or are they teeth?

“I believe it’s my turn,” he says.

You stare at his whiskers, tiny spare trees in the dead of winter.

“Have you had fun?” he asks.

You’re not sure how to respond, so you smile back. Your teeth are definitely false.

“I’m glad,” he says. Then he pauses. “Well, uh, unfortunately for us this broke old retirement home only has one computer. And I need to write my grandkid an email.”

You snap back into your body, where everything feels like needles. “Oh,” you say. You wheel yourself out of his way.

“I wish they’d stop blowing the budget on those yoga classes and shell out for a new desktop,” he says, chuckling. “That would probably help you out, huh? I see you here every day.”

“That would be nice,” you say.

“What’s got you hooked? Facebook?”

You nod. “It makes me feel young,” you say. Why is this man acting like he knows you?

“Yeah?” he says. “It makes my blood boil, all those angry political rants. But I guess boiling blood is a youthful feeling. What’s your name?”

“Hi, it’s… uh, I’m... I guess I… I can’t think of it right now.” Blood rushes to your face, the hot sting of shame. How could you forget your name? It’s your marker on Earth, your identity, the most fundamental word in any language connecting you to the rest of the world. The shame spreads throughout your body; you feel paralyzed. There’s really no going back from this. The life raft has sunk.

“Don’t worry. I forget mine all the time. That’s why I keep this card on me. I’m—” He pulls a business card from his pocket and reads it. “Jordan Simmons. Wow, better name than I expected. It’s nice to meet you.”

He hands you the card. All that’s on it are his name and phone number.

“Nice to meet you,” you mumble.

“I’ll be quick with this email. You can get back on the computer in a minute if you want… Or if not, you can join me in the cafeteria for lunch. I’d love the company.”

He leans in and in a conspiratorial tone whispers, “I think they’re serving pudding today.”

Which is funny, because they serve pudding every day.

All at once, you remember your name, your birthday, your childhood home, and a whole lot else. You remember David’s most earnest face and the promise you made him. You remember the snap of the camera shutter when it closed on your wedding day. You remember lies, wishes, sneaking out at 17 to skinny dip at the creek, your head overflowing not with worries but with dreams.

The shame releases its grip and you lean in, holding back laughter, to reply in the same conspiratorial whisper, “I’ve never tried pudding.”

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