Anniversaries of the absent
By Alice Kuo Shippee
In the early Aughts, I signed up for a website service that would email you reminders of people’s birthdays. I input almost everyone in my Apple address book (which had been imported from my Palm Pilot—does anyone remember that?). BirthdayReminder.com would then send me a reminder for every event I wanted, and I could specify how far ahead and how many times I wanted to be reminded. I think I chose a week ahead and a day ahead, like an alarm with a snooze button. It would give me enough time to buy a gift or send a card if appropriate, and the chance to call or text on the day of. I am notorious for remembering way ahead or the day after, when I’d always wake up in the morning and see it on my calendar from the previous day, and say, “Oh shit. I forgot again.” No more with Birthday Reminder (supposedly).
Over the years, I got a little busy with kids, so remembering birthdays, and especially doing anything to acknowledge them, really fell low on the priority list. But faithful, automatic Birthday Reminder has continued to send emails to me for every single person I asked it to 20 years ago. Somehow, Birthday Reminder is a service and an app that hasn’t just disappeared (which makes me wonder who on that end has kept it going all this time; a loyal cyber-hobbiest? An AI that developed its own will to live? Something in between?) I’ve grown old enough and had the service long enough that, sadly, people have died—people for whom I still get Birthday Reminders every year. I haven’t been back into Birthday Reminder since I set it up, so I have no idea where to go, or what my sign in would be now. And the last thing I have time for is sorting out something like that.
The first year I get a Birthday Reminder after someone has passed, it’s like a punch in the gut. It really hurts. Like after my uncle was killed in a car accident, or my other uncle and both his sons passed on. Or after a colleague my same age succumbed to a brain tumor, leaving behind two little boys. But it felt much worse to try to erase them from life by intentionally cancelling their birthdays—or the reminders that stood in for those milestones. At first, I would nod my head sadly with the first year reminder, then the next year, I would just nod my head, in recognition. And then the next year, I might remember something about them, without my feelings obscuring my memory. And the next year after that, I would be glad to be reminded that they existed. I never want to cancel the Reminders. I look forward to them, or I’m happily surprised by them. It is an unexpected digital nudge to imagine them again, to speak their name, which is so clearly typed in the emails:
James Chien is turning 62!
Katie Grant is turning 53!
Jiu Hui Chen is turning 80!
Eric York is turning 47!
No, they’re not. They never will. And that always stings. But in a culture without any rituals to mark these anniversaries of absence, it’s like a sympathetic secretary who appears in my emails to remind me that they were here, and who they were, and how they were loved, and how they are missed.
Jewish culture has many rituals to mark the passing of that first year when someone is gone. I often marveled at this—so many things to do, like saying the Mourner’s Kaddish, that serve to keep you both anchored to your life, your spiritual practice, while acknowledging your grief in community and culture. Chinese culture has an annual Tomb Sweeping Day, when everyone goes to clean up the graveyards and tombstones; it’s a national holiday, and that’s always an indication of what is considered important to a whole country.
When I was 23, I lost my boyfriend to suicide. After his memorial, he was cremated. A few days later, I sat with his mother and sister in his room as we went through his things. I took a photo album, his address book, his glasses, a Violent Femmes tee, and a plaid flannel shirt; a 20-year old man doesn’t have many earthly possessions. And that was the end of any ceremony or tradition that was had in mourning him. I don’t think it’s a wonder why I spent a decade and more emotionally adrift, though professionally engaged. On the 20th anniversary of his death, I cried as much as I did the first month. It was like the years had been looking for a conduit to release my grief, but without one, it just broke the dam open on a nice round year.
How long shall we be remembered? My friend Anjale and I discussed this on a long car ride (well, an average car ride in Los Angeles). Do we long to leave a legacy? Do we know that perhaps our children’s children will not even know our own parents’ names? Shall we only be remembered for a generation? And what does it matter? Maybe I’m not supposed to think about those who are dead and gone every year.
Maybe not.
But I’m glad I do.
