This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In 2021, the writer Sherry Turner decided to look up her mom's house on Google Maps. She typed in the address and hit enter. When the picture

came up on her screen, it showed the house with a light on in her mom's bedroom.

Sherry's heart skipped a beat.

Her mom had died some years earlier in 2017.

Google Maps had captured the image nearly 10 years before that.

The light in the bedroom window was a snapshot from the past,

like the glow of a star that has long since burned out.

But to Sherry, at least in the world of Google Maps,

it felt like her mom was still alive in the home where Sherry grew up.

Sherry described what the experience felt like.

She wrote of her mom,

it is still her house, she is still alive,

I am still visiting every few months on the train.

The

Sherry Turner's reaction to the image and Google Maps is part of a very old story.

In every human culture, in every age, people try to preserve the memories of loved ones.

They set up memorials, mark anniversaries, share

remembrances. Letters and family heirlooms are passed down generation to

generation. They are always people try to keep the dead alive, at least in memory.

But inevitably memories fade over time. There is nothing we can do to bring those relationships back.

Or, is there?

What if there is a way to never say goodbye, to avert the finality of death?

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