Looking for answers

Prologue:

I have had this post half-written since October of 2023.  I was sure that I would get some momentum and peel back all the layers of digital clues over the days, weeks, and months after summers passed in a way that would make complete sense.  It didn’t happen that way.  Maliase set in after being afraid that I would hate the results of my search.  After this long, it was more about relief.  Relief that you get when you have let a task sit to long.  So long that you can feel it on your shoulder ALL THE TIME!  I hope at some point her final memorial becomes that way.  But it hasn’t.

When I read through the post after I published it… I had the feeling that all the sentences and thoughts were as short as morse code phrases.  Very staccato.

It also explains why I used some phrases a few times over.  There were paragraphs written months apart from each other that describe “picking” through Summers papers and digital devices.

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Looking for permission to live a normal life?

Looking for direction from beyond?

Over the past year, I have gone through varying levels of guilt.  Early on, after she passed, as I picked through Summer’s digital devices, it was a harsher self-hatred for the action.  Now, as time has moved further away, I feel that I have been too lax as I have gone through Summer’s phone looking for any nuggets of “her”.  My self loath has changed to a guilt feeling.

I didn’t jump into the full investigation immediately.  When Summer passed…  Nate, Aiden, and I were picking through her room and found some old diaries… But their context was way out of place with her life situation since being diagnosed.   Anything written about boys and friends when she was 14 seems to be lightweight compared to the life and death-realizations she must have been churning in her head since last May.  I let it rest.

After the memorial services and the return to normal day-to-day life, it took months before I started looking again… I started with her phone.  Google Sheets…  Docs and Gmail.  Apple Notes.  Voice Memos.  You name it.   Nothing is there.   I shouldn’t say “nothing”.  There is LOTS of writing and its all homework!  She was busting ass to complete her classes.  All the way to the end of May 2023.  There was one message that gave me pause that I found in her “Notes”.   Its below.

I can’t imagine the strength it took to write that… And I imagine it was twice as hard to send it to her friends.

This past week…  After thinking about it on the drive back from Colorado…  I came back to the house and decided that I needed to open up her laptop and start making sure that no stones were unturned.  I sometimes wonder if I were to die tomorrow… Would anyone know where to look for any notes?  (In all transparency, short of some blog drafts in WordPress or Google Docs….  I don’t have any “Last Will” items lying around.  So don’t waste your time).

Ironically, when I told Angela this… She told me that she was ready for this as well.  And was happy I was going to start doing the cyber housekeeping.

Its a bit lofty to think that Summer would take her last weeks and type out something that told us how to carry on or ponder existence.  While we were speeding across the country for our road trip, her condition was crumbling before our eyes.  Her ability to sort her pills and make much sense of the situation when we arrived at her final visit at St. Jude seemed very surreal.  Were the anti-depressants pulling her from reality so hard that she had no idea what was going on?  When we were in hospice she was making friendly conversations with her friends as if it were a class reunion.

Summer’s whole being rolled up and burned brightly as we headed to Seattle…  The ride back was her fade.  Our final few days on the road were a struggle for everyone.  I was happy that she had the back of the RV to sit with Nate and feel comfortable.  She was not going to be writing with any eloquence in those last weeks.

I opened her laptop this weekend and was frightened to see a Bitlocker recovery key.  This is the ultimate “blue screen of death”,  OMG.  There is a chance I can never get this computer opened!  I sent messages to Nate and to Justin, her professor about any leads.  I then texted my boss and IT director Pat asking him for advice.  Everyone was at a loss.

I started working backward.  Logged into her dawgpound ID and found that her bitlocker ID was still tied to her SIU email.  Once I located that and recovered her pins and SMS authorizations… I was cooking.  This all took hours on Sunday.

The laptop finally opened and I was able to see that her whole desktop was filled with Word docs for the Maroon Guard.  Her organizational skills were fully applied to that little group of SIU cadets that she served with.  It was her “thing” and it was a bit of a pleasure to see that she worked hard on it.

No candid messages are waiting to be discovered or read.  Sorry.

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One of the other things I made a goal was to start closing her social media accounts.

TikTok was easy… She had a page of recipes…  But never posted a video.  Its now deactivated.

Facebook has been a tough one.   I am her executor on the app, and have submitted an obituary to create a “memorial account”.  That was Sunday, and I still have not gotten confirmation that it’s complete.

Snap Chat…  Ugh.  Her phone sits on the charging pad between Angela and I in the living room.  Her account is still active and her location is shared with 31 other Snap “friends”.  I was thinking of making a final message and giving the warning that her account is going away.  But, I have not decided on the tone.  Eventually, it’s coming.

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I own American Utopia on video and have watched it a dozen times over the past year.  David Byrne starts the beginning song as a muse about what gos on in our brains.  When I hear it, I think about the fragility of memories and what was lost in Summer’s mind.

Here is a region of abundant details
Here is a region that is seldom used
Here is a region that continues living
Even when the other sections are removed
Put your hand out of your pocket
Wipe the sweat off of your brow
Now it feels like a bad connection
No more information now
As it passes through your neurons
Like a whisper in the dark
Raise your eyes to one who loves you
It is safe right where you are

Here is an area of great confusion
Here is a section that’s extremely precise
And here is an area that needs attention
Here is a connection with the opposite side

Here, too many sounds for your brain to comprehend
Here the sound gets organized into things that make some sense
Here there is something we call elucidation
Is it the truth or merely a description?