real life

When Bill's dad died, he visited him on Google Street View. Then Google updated it.

For Bill Frankel, Google Street View was more than just a navigation tool, more than a way to check out a new house or find a shop. It was a place where he could see his beloved dad at his happiest, even years after he’d died.

Frankel’s father found respite in the things many of us see as chores – doing the gardening, edging the lawns, tinkering in his workshop. But his wife was not so active, she needed constant care, and so the Frankel children had no choice – they moved their parents to a retirement community.

It was a move that Bill now believes may have killed his father.

“After he died, my parents’ house, which my siblings and I had been preparing for sale, was put on the market,” he wrote for Modern Loss. “When the listing came online, my brother called me, his voice shaking, and asked me to take a look at the listing. When I logged on, I understood why he sounded so shook up.”

There on the screen was his father. Working in the yard – his happy place, – completely oblivious that the Google car was capturing that little sliver of his day.

“There he was, totally in his element,” wrote Frankel. “How we wished he were still there.”

The image had been there since 2007, but no one in the Frankel family had seen it until after he died.

At the time, I told the story to everyone, and posted on social media about his Google Street View encounter. And I frequently visited him online – logging on to introduce him to his grandchildren, but mainly just to make sure he was still there," wrote Frankel.

"As my oldest sister said, being able to check in on Dad in the yard (even virtually) helped mitigate the guilt we felt for taking him out of his element in the first place. It was as if he spent the past few years 'at home'."

Then came the inevitable second loss, the Google update. The yard was now empty again. Just two unfamiliar cars in the driveway.

"That fact was more shocking than finding my father there in the first place, some three years earlier. I’m not an emotional person, but this revelation really overwhelmed me with sadness, especially as I broke the news to my wife and my siblings," he wrote.

"Only now does his loss feel real, for all of us."