The Bittersweetness of Grief Through the Death of a Laptop

What are we allowed to grieve? Are we allowed to mourn inanimate objects? We mourn concepts all of the time. Part of the reason why the death of a relationship is heartbreaking is because we are mourning the concept of potential aka the future that will never exist with that person despite the potential of it existing. We mourn the memories we shared with that person, now shadowed by the grief of losing their love, and the existing life that we shared with them that now has to change in the face of their absence. We mourn so much when a relationship with a human dies, but very little of it is tangible or offers a physical presence. 

Therefore, can I not mourn the death of my beloved laptop? Is my grief invalid because it is an object, something that can be replaced? 

In the fantastic novel The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, the main character becomes a hoarder after the unexpected death of her husband. She fills her life with objects because they bring her joy and negate the loss sucking the life from her home. The book fully explores the concept popularized by Marie Kondo that items hold a soul of sorts and provide fulfillment for people despite being “only” an inanimate object. What is trash to one person is a treasure to another because of how that object speaks to the holder. (I highly recommend reading The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, by the way. It heals the soul in ways that you don’t expect.) With this concept, items have the same right to be mourned as we hold private relationships with them that are just as impactful as the “living” relationships in our lives.  

For me, the death of my laptop is such a relationship. It feels like I’m losing an old friend, one that held my hand and carried me through an important period of my life. 

When I received my Macbook Pro, it was a gift of freedom and power that empowered me to chase my dreams. I could edit videos with ease, craft graphics that would take hours on my old computer in minutes, and write endless streams of words in countless documents. Those words later became books and those books became published and available for the world to read because of this laptop. As someone with a lifelong dream of creating, this laptop was the most important tool to allow me to fulfill that dream. Later, as someone who experienced both the loneliness of a post-grad transition to a state away from all of my college friends and the loneliness of self-isolation/quarantine for most of 2020, my laptop was often my only outlet for companionship during those times. Whether it be through journaling or allowing me digitized access to my distant friends, my laptop was a tether for my sanity more than I care to admit. 

Now, after seven long, well used, years, it’s finally experiencing a motherboard issue that not even my extensive technical troubleshooting skills can resolve. That happens with technology. Things change against your will. Executives blinded by profits push a software update that makes the device unusable or, a more favorable death, the hardware just runs its course. It’s a fixed point in my timeline that my favorite laptop would cease to function out of the blue despite my best care of it. Such is the cruelty of death - things end despite your efforts to prevent them from doing so. There was nothing I could do to alter this point. It had to happen eventually.  

It is likely because of this attitude that death is inevitable that I’m not sad about my laptop’s end despite my affection for it. Yes I am mourning the loss, but I’m also celebrating it. This laptop was essential in carrying me through some tough times in my life. It did well in its seven years. It’s bittersweet to know that something so good and loved in my life is ending, but it’s also exciting to see the next step. For example, my next laptop won’t have the same hardware power as my old one - it won’t need it. The death of my current laptop made me realize that my goals in life have evolved from when I first received it, which is also bittersweet to mourn and celebrate. I grieve for my younger self who thought the laptop would mean we would have several books and a media empire to maintain by now, but I celebrate for my current self who found peace in living younger Maddie’s worst nightmares by using the laptop almost exclusively as a glorified word processor and cookbook screen. When I finally stop beating around the bush and purchase a new laptop, I’ll get to experience new memories with the new laptop, create new things that my previous laptop never even conceived. 

The death of my laptop isn’t necessarily a sad one as it’s also a celebration of my self-growth. It’s a celebration of ending one chapter to lead to the next one. But it’s still sad to lose something so impactful on my life. I’m allowed to be sad about losing who I used to be when I first received my laptop. I’m allowed to mourn the end of the security of having such a powerful tool in my life to help me become the person I am today. Now I’m facing the unknown - who will I be at the end of my next laptop’s life? What will my new laptop create? Will it be a Windows laptop or another Apple? Should I splurge for a touchscreen? Why do current laptops hate USB ports so much? So many deep, impactful questions. 

For now, I’m prepping the external hard drive for one last backup as the final resting place to hold all my laptop’s data. Seven years of fully self-publishing one book, setting up the publication for two more, drafting roughly four other manuscripts (give or take about three-five manuscripts), editing countless YouTube videos and graphics (including a couple that got my channel to over half a million views), my Bachelor's Degree, an inflated battery, a trip to Arizona, endless visits to coffeeshops, sleepless nights working tirelessly on it, starting my own business, and dropping orange juice on the keyboard once to make the “A” key permanently sticky, reduced to a single brick that I’ll likely allow to collect dust until I need an older file from college or a picture for a flashback challenge on Twitter. 

Grief contains multitudes. For me, this grief is bittersweet and I’m allowing myself to feel all of the emotions that come from losing such a beloved piece of my life. Even if it is just an object that can be replaced on my next trip to Best Buy, my exact experience with this specific object can never be replicated and for that, I am allowed to mourn the loss. 

From the bottom of my heart, goodbye old friend and thank you for carrying me through to the next chapter.  

Is it still cool to have gifs in your blog posts? Is it even still cool to do blog posts? Idk. It sparks joy.