When notifications remind us of things we’d rather forget

My breaking point with promotional emails and desktop alerts finally happened a few weeks ago. I woke up at 7AM to an automated Legacy.com email with my friend’s death-a-versary in the subject line. The email itself was annoying enough, but what it said made it a cold, thoughtless annoyance: “Being remembered matters. The flowers you sent last year were a comforting gesture of sympathy and support.”

I didn’t send flowers. I planted a tree.