See if you can get into my dad's phone.

You didn't get into my dad's phone.

After he died recently,
neither did I.

The privacy that protects us in life is the same thing that locks everyone out after. A passcode cannot be recovered by anyone, including the manufacturer. Getting into the account takes a death certificate, a formal request and often a court order — and even then, there's no guarantee it will work.

I don't know what's behind those four digits, and maybe I wasn't meant to. But there might be photos and videos I'll never see, and things he'd written down that he would have wanted me to know. Everything else got harder as well — closing bank accounts, ending subscriptions, working out which insurance company he used, telling his friends he was gone. But I'll never know, because we never talked about it.

Have this conversation before you can't.

If someone came to mind while reading this, send it to them.

Dad, I miss you.
Erik

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