Sorry for the bad pun, but what do you do when you have multiple dead people’s numbers in your cell phone? I had some time to kill at work today (ok, I was on the shitter with nothing to read) so I started purging unused numbers from my contact list. Along with the digits of estranged third cousins and some quasi-buddies from high school, I stumbled across the phone numbers of two people I knew who are no longer alive. One of these girls was a friend and the other a casual acquaintance. I had left both their numbers in my phone as a sign of respect for the dead.

Until today, when I deleted them while sitting on the toilet. And I feel kind of bad about this. Was I dishonoring their memories by taking them out of my phone?

I should explain here that I’m a real packrat. I hold on to absolutely everything. Ticket stubs, postcards, programs from my 8th grade assemblies- I have them all saved and categorized by year into boxes. I’m crazy like that. Its unusual for me to go back and root through this stuff, but the one or two times I have it was great to know that I had all these memories saved if I really needed them.

So I held on to the deceaseds’ numbers for the same reason. These girls names happened to be Akilah and Amanda, so they were up at the top of my phonebook and I would end up scrolling past them a lot. Odd as it may seem, I felt like I was at least doing something to keep their memories alive every time I read their names. I figured that I would like people to be thinking about me from time to time if I had died, and that their numbers (and their creepily still-existent facebook profiles) would be a good way to do this.

But more and more, running across those names at unexpected times was starting to feel more disrespectful than deleting them. My friend Akilah had a beautiful smile and was a talented writer- shouldn’t I remember those qualities in moments of repose, not in the distracted second before I called my grandparents?

So I might have deleted those numbers at a less than appropriate time, but I think it was for the best. I sometimes think I hold on to things too long, and for the wrong reasons, so this was nice exercise in throwing things away without losing them…if that makes any sense.

While we’re at it: if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, what would you want to happen to your technological footprints? Would you want someone to delete your friendster (or ManHunt) account? Or would you want them around forever as a way of remembering you?