Griever's Remorse

The grieving process varies from person to person, but the initial resistance to letting go is universal. In the episode "Be Right Back" of Black Mirror Martha's husband Ash died after being in a car accident. At the funeral a girl named Sara talked about a service that might help. The software Sara mentioned to help Martha through the grieving process mimics the deceased person's online persona. Martha's vulnerability played a role in how far she went with the software. I understand using the messaging part of the software as a crutch for the first few weeks while trying to deal with loss, but the developers could easily take advantage of the people using the service in order to get more funds invested in the software. The individuals using the service could become attached to the software and in turn isolate themselves from others that care about them like Martha did with her sister. Ignoring calls and messages in order to spend all her time communicating with the software. I found it interesting that Ash being so delved into social media and being attached to his phone every second was the likely reason he got in a car accident, causing his death but this also became the source for the software to create a physical form based off what Ash put online over the years. Most people show themselves in the best light when posting online. His online self couldn't replace the actual person he was in real life because technology has its limits. Martha also became more connected to technology because the more she did the closer she felt like she was to having Ash back. That's why it wasn't hard for her to decide to go from messages to telephone calls then lastly to the physical form to get the software to be the Ash she wanted back.
Martha's response to the physical form of the software was as expected. After she came down from a high of the idea of having Ash back in her life she started to see the flaws in the software. The flaws were just evidence that technology can only go so far when trying to replicate the human; it lacks emotion, passion, the connection needed with human interaction. Martha still was unable to get rid of the creation she helped make, so she ended up keeping him in the attic. The saying out of sight, out of mind sums up the way she ended up dealing with him. She had him in the attic with all the things the real Ash's mother kept out of sight to help her move forward after people died. By the end of the episode, it showed Martha years later with her daughter, her last real connect to the deceased Ash. She allowed her daughter to see the clone version of Ash, but the episode doesn't show how much of an understanding the child had of what clone Ash really was. I could tell Martha still had trouble dealing with the idea of the version of Ash she had created, yet she couldn't just let him rot in the attic alone. She had to see him as slightly human to an extent to go through confronting the fact that he wasn't the Ash she lost anytime she sees him when she goes up to the attic with her daughter.
"Be Right Back" made me think about how far people will go to avoid the inevitable, dealing with the idea of death. Just was Ash died, it could be time for our life to end at any point. The people we leave behind have to cope, but trying to recreate the deceased through technology isn't the answer. There also needs to be something in place so the advancement of technology of this kind won't depend on manipulating people already in a vulnerable state.