I have long accepted that my life comes with an expiration date.
That is not meant to sound morbid. It is simply a fact, and one that becomes more relevant as we grow older and accumulate things someone else will eventually handle.
I have begun thinking about the usual arrangements: estate planning, memorial preferences, an obituary, and what becomes of my possessions.
Then I saw an advertisement for a gravestone medallion. Scan it with a phone and it opens an online memorial containing photographs and stories about the person buried there.
It occurred to me that I have another life requiring a wrap-up plan.
My digital one.
And it is extensive.
I have spent nearly 19 years posting on Facebook. I have accounts with Instagram, X, Reddit, Discord, and assorted forums. I have email, subscriptions, thousands of photographs stored on computers and in the cloud, and accounts with services I have probably forgotten joining.
I also have an enormous archive of ChatGPT conversations containing newspaper work, research, personal reflection, idle curiosity, and inspired foolishness. It may reveal more about how I think than almost anything else I will leave behind.
These are all parts of my digital life, but they are not the same kind of thing. They cannot be handled with a single instruction such as “save everything” or “delete my accounts.”
Some things should remain. Some must be closed. Some ought to be preserved. Some should probably disappear without being examined.
Someone will have to decide.
That is hardly a new responsibility. Someone usually has to write the obituary, selecting what will represent a life. Family members decide which photographs and letters to keep and what becomes of desks, drawers, and closets.
The person handling our digital remains faces a considerably larger and stranger task.
Some of the record was intentionally public. Some was saved for personal use. Some accumulated automatically. Some has financial implications. Some may be meaningful to others. Some is simply nobody else’s business.
My Facebook profile belongs largely in the first category. I put things there because I wanted other people to see them.
I have a couple of deceased friends whose families memorialized their profiles. When one appears in a Facebook Memories post, I can click on the name, visit the profile, and spend a few moments remembering the person.
I like being able to do that.
My profile contains nearly two decades of photographs, stories, arguments, newspaper articles, jokes, and exchanges with friends. It is not a complete record of my life, but it is certainly part of one.
I would not expect my sister Carol to go through it all deciding which posts properly represent me. That would be an enormous burden and, in some ways, an attempt to rewrite a record I knowingly created.
The accumulated Davidness should probably remain accumulated.
Memorialize the profile, prevent Facebook from treating me as an active user, and leave most of it alone. Perhaps material from it could someday populate an online memorial reached through a gravestone medallion.
I feel differently about my computers and cloud accounts.
I have decades of photography and other work with personal or historical value. I would not want it erased. At the same time, I dislike the thought of someone examining every file simply because I am unavailable to object.
Death should not automatically turn privacy into family property.
That was true before computers. A locked drawer did not necessarily become everyone’s business because its owner died. A box of letters might be preserved, destroyed, or entrusted to someone. The difference today is volume. One computer can hold more personal material than generations could stuff into an attic.
My ChatGPT archive presents an interesting problem. It could help someone understand me better, but that does not give someone the right to read it. The same applies to email, private messages, unfinished writing, or photographs never intended to be shared.
Digital estate planning is often presented as a matter of leaving passwords. Passwords may provide access, but they do not provide judgment. Giving someone the ability to open everything does not tell that person what should be done with it.
What survivors really need is guidance.
What should remain publicly visible? What should be preserved privately? Which accounts must be closed or transferred? What should be deleted without inspection? Who can be trusted to make decisions about everything we failed to anticipate?
A useful plan might begin with identifying the principal email account, explaining where important photographs and documents are stored, designating someone to manage digital affairs, and leaving broad instructions about what should survive and what should not.
Files could be separated into an archive intended to remain, material an executor may review, and a private collection to be deleted unopened. Nothing would need to be destroyed while we are still using it. We would simply establish boundaries for the person handling things later.
We cannot control exactly how others will remember us. They will retain their own photographs, messages, stories, and impressions. That has always been true.
But previous generations did not leave behind digital identities scattered across dozens of companies, devices, and online communities.
I am not ready to begin deleting pieces of my digital life. I am still living it. But I probably should begin deciding what should survive me, what should be closed, and what should be allowed to disappear.
I have accepted that my life comes with an expiration date. I am only beginning to understand that my digital life needs more instructions for what happens afterward.