There is a chapter in Cariad Lloyd’s new book You Are Not Alone that considers the concept of a digital archive of memories left behind after a person’s death. It prompted me to call my dead friend’s voicemail in the hope I could hear their voice again. While I have photographs of us together, video footage on a dusty CD of us drunk and giddy at Sydney Harbor, it was the seemingly mundane and impersonal message on their mobile phone I craved. But when I called, the line was dead.
“That’s happened to a lot of my guests,” Lloyd tells me, of the stars who’ve joined her on her multi-award winning Griefcast podcast. “Phone companies sell dead people’s numbers and people don’t realise. [So they] call the number and some random person picks up. We mistakenly think these messages are still out there in the ether.”
