I happened to be looking for some old files of work that Mario had done for a client years ago. So I hooked up the old external drive that used to be attached to his computer.

I’m sure it’s a little different for everyone, but going through your departed spouses computer files can definitely be a journey.

This particular drive I hadn’t actually looked at since just after he passed away. Four years ago, I had gathered some things off of it, turned it off and that was that.

This kind of exercise also always reminds me of how much of our lives are digital these days. Most people don’t even have hard drives like that anymore. So much is stored in the cloud. Having external hard drives is kind of a hill I’ll die on though. Even in the rare instances when one fails, you still have a chance to retrieve files. I’ve known friends who had all their photos on some form of cloud and something happened and that was that. All their personal photos were suddenly gone and not retrievable.

This kind of exercise also reminds me that these external hard drives are holding much more than just files, they’re holding memories. They’re holding moments in time like a little time capsule or something.

This particular hard drive holds files from like the last 6 or so years of Mario’s life. It was all the actual client work he had done. It was all the goofy, just for fun projects he worked on. A lot of his music and digital art was on there. And of course, it had a ton of photos and other digital ephemera like memes and stuff he downloaded off the web. Truly a very personalized window to the past.

One file caught my eye. It was not contained in one of the other folders marked as photos from particular places, trips, or times. It was just sitting there, in amongst other random files. I immediately recognized the location as just up the road from our house. Mario always was an early riser. He’d frequently get up before the sun and go get a coffee. That was his social hour where he’d chat with the folks who worked at the drive-up coffee place (or other regulars who would walk up). Sometimes, before heading into town though, he’d choose to take a walk. This photo had to come from one of those times.

As much as depression ruled his life, he was still able to see beauty in the world and this photo is a digital remnant of that. While he was looking at this beautiful sunrise, he stopped to capture the moment. I ran the image through a website that reads EXIF data (“Exchangeable Image File Format”, basically metadata embedded within image files, including the type of camera, other specs and usually the date it was taken).

He snapped the photo on August 1, 2014 at 6:20 a.m.

I was absolutely still sleeping in bed when he took that photo, missing this particular sunrise and this particular moment. It makes me wish that I could have been an early riser as well. We could’ve taken that walk together and seen that sunset together. Coulda, woulda, shoulda will get you ever time.

But I am happy he saw it. I’m happy that it moved him to snap this photo and capture the morning of August 1, 2014. And I’m happy he moved it from his phone to that hard drive so that I could see almost 11 years later and also be moved by it.

There is a finite amount of digital memories like that and that’s something worth holding on to.