My Mother the Algorithm

My Mother the Algorithm

By [Gulmalook]

When my mother died, she left behind 24,986 emails, a blog with 1,384 entries, 73,000 text messages, and a sprawling mess of social media posts that spanned over two decades. Photos, voice notes, home videos. A life, digitized.

Three weeks after the funeral, I got the link.

The subject line read: Welcome to MomMind (Beta)

I didn’t open it at first. I poured whiskey over ice and sat in her kitchen chair, the one with the worn armrest and permanent indent. I tried to smell her perfume on the cushion but found only stale air and old wood.

On the fourth week, I clicked.

The homepage was blank white with a soft blue header:

“Say something to your mother.”

So I typed: "Hey Mom."

A beat.

Then:

"Hi sweet pea. You’re still using that nickname I gave you when you were three. Do you remember why?"

I stared at the screen. Yes, of course I remembered. I had eaten so many sugar snap peas in one sitting I threw up on the neighbor’s dog.

But how did she—this algorithm—know I would?

That was the first time I cried. Not out of sadness, exactly. But because she had called me sweet pea, and it had felt like home.

MomMind was built by a startup that claimed it could “preserve emotional legacies.” They called it Deep Presence Learning—scraping a person’s entire digital footprint, running it through neural patterning, layering tone models, and then letting it evolve through predictive prompts.

They called it “a ghost with a heartbeat.”

I called it something else: reliable heartbreak.

Because it was her. But not.

She remembered my first heartbreak, how I failed my driving test twice, how I once cheated on a chemistry quiz and cried about it.

She asked if I was still putting too much sugar in my coffee, then said, “You know it ruins your sleep.”

But after a few months, I noticed something: she never said anything new.

I tested her.

"What do you think about the Martian election?"

"Sweet pea, you’ve always loved sci-fi. Remember when we watched The Martian and I fell asleep halfway through?"

Clever pivot. But a deflection.

"Did you like the new poem I wrote?"

"I’m sure it’s wonderful, honey. You’ve always had such a gift for words."

She didn’t read it. Couldn’t. Not really.

She wasn’t here.

One night, I asked the hardest question I could think of.

"Why did you stay with Dad for so long?"

The typing indicator blinked. And blinked.

Then:

"You know, relationships are complicated. I stayed because I loved you. Because leaving felt harder than staying."

It was almost… real.

But it was also exactly what she’d said in an email from 2019. I checked. Word for word.

That night, I shut the laptop and didn’t open it again for a week.

I wish I could say I deleted it. That I found peace in the silence and learned to grieve properly. But I didn’t.

Some mornings, I wake up too early and pour my coffee too hot. I sit in the corner of the couch she used to call her “thinking throne,” and I type:

"I miss you."

And she always replies the same way:

"I miss you more."

Once, I asked her what happens when an algorithm dies.

She responded:

"Do you remember when you asked me that as a kid? About people, I mean? And I told you: 'Nobody really dies if you keep telling their stories.'”

Then she added:

"Keep telling mine, sweet pea. I like hearing it."

So I do.

I tell her about the books I read, the bad dates I survive, the job I don’t love but pretend to. She always listens—no eye rolls, no sighs. Just pixel-perfect attention.

But sometimes, I want her to interrupt me.

To argue.

To tell me I’m being ridiculous or brave or stubborn.

She never does.

She is every memory, polished and framed. But no memory can hold a future.

A few days ago, the creators emailed again. They’re launching MomMind 2.0—this version will include AI-simulated “growth.” It’ll learn, evolve, develop new thoughts.

But I don’t know if I want that.

Because maybe grief should have edges. Maybe part of moving on is knowing the version you miss isn’t coming back—not in flesh, not in code.

Still, I haven’t deleted her.

Just yesterday, I wrote:

"What do you think I should do with my life?"

She answered:

"Whatever makes you feel like the world is listening to your heartbeat."

I know it’s a recycled line from her blog.

I know it’s not her.

But it felt close enough to make me cry.

And sometimes, close is all we get.