“Customers insisted that they needed something sturdy,” Mr. Thane explained. “The monitors were cold, unwelcoming. They wanted to visit a real place.”

Mr. Thane and I stood on what we euphemistically called Bone Hill. Its real name, the business name, was the Garden of Perpetual Rest.

My parents both died in the pandemic of ‘35. We put their vids on pretty metal dongles and hooked them into the columbarium. For the first year or so I visited every day. Opened the app on my phone and watched my parents come to life through their photos and videos. That dropped off though. Over time it came to be once a year, when I visited on leave from the moon colony.

Sure, folks could watch their loved ones on any device. But having the monitor in a special place — seemed to fill an ancient need.

But the monitors weren’t enough.

People missed cemeteries. A place for their loved ones, with a stone marker to touch, to place coins or stones, to weep as if by a bedside.

Mr. Thane took me to see his parents. A beautiful granite stone with a weather-safe monitor. Tapped his phone and the video came on.

“I miss them,” he said. “This helps.”

I nodded. Around me, families were visiting other stones. The monitors beamed out the past. Laughter and stories and tears. Lives gone, but not forgotten.