“Missing you is flashes of our past and fantasies of our future with the hard irony of the absence of our present as present occurs.”
– Z.H.I, the author of ‘Operation Zombie Apocalypse Prep: Gearing Up!’
TECHNOLOGY has always promised us convenience, but lately, it has begun offering something else – something far more tender: a way to glimpse the impossible.
With the rise of Gemini AI and other photo-generation tools, people are no longer just smoothing out wrinkles or brightening shadows.
Instead, they are daring to bend time.
Across social media, you will see images of people digitally reuniting with loved ones who have passed: a daughter placing herself beside the father who never lived to see her grow up, a grandmother tenderly holding a grandchild she never met, or partners posing in wedding portraits that never happened.
It is haunting, tender, and achingly human.
For many, these pictures are not about pretending – they are about longing.
They are about love stretching across the limits of time, reaching for a “what if” that can never be.
For me, this fascination became deeply personal when my father shared an edited photograph.
The original was one of the most precious keepsakes in my family: a picture of me as a baby cradled in the arms of my late grandmother.
She has long since passed on, and that photo has always been both a comfort and a wound – a reminder of the love I once felt and the loss that followed.
But in this new AI-generated version, the baby in her arms was not me – it was my son.
When I first saw it, I broke down in tears.
The image pulled me into an alternate universe I longed for – my son meeting the great-grandmother he will only know through stories.
It was a fleeting glimpse into a moment that can never truly happen, and yet it felt achingly real.
There is also a sharp pang that comes with these images.
Beyond my grandmother, I wish my late grandfathers were here too.
I imagine the pride in their eyes and the warmth of their voices as they cradled their great-grandson.
Yet I know – in another life, perhaps – it would be different.
In this one, their absence is part of the story my son will inherit just as their legacy is part of me.
This is the strange and dual gift of AI.
It creates visions of what might have been, stirring both wonder and grief in equal measure.
It does not erase reality but instead highlights its fragility.
I thought back to something my son’s paediatrician once told me: “Take lots of pictures and videos of him, because time passes by fast.”
At the time, I nodded politely, the way new parents often do when offered advice.
But I did not grasp the weight of his words until now.
Time truly does slip through our fingers like sand.
My baby, once wrapped snug in newborn clothes, is already outgrowing them.
His movements shift daily – one day he is lying on his back, the next he is rolling over, grabbing things, trying to make sense of the world with wide and curious eyes.
Photographs and videos, real or imagined, are all we have to pin these fleeting moments in place.
They are our evidence that it happened – that we lived it, felt it, survived it.
The AI-edited photo my father showed me may have been a fabrication, but the emotions it evoked were real.
It made me weep, yes, but it also made me grateful.
Because as much as I yearn for the presence of those who are gone, I still have the presence of those who remain.
My parents are here.
They are alive, well, and brimming with joy as they hold their first grandchild.
Not a digital rendering, not an alternate dimension – this reality. Imperfect, fleeting and wondrous now.
There is something profoundly humbling about seeing your parents step into the role of grandparents.
I see in their eyes the same tenderness that once held me now extended to my son.
I hear in their laughter echoes of their past selves, marvelling at how life comes full circle.
They are the living continuation of my late grandmother and grandfathers, carrying their love forward into a new generation.
Technology may give us glimpses of what could have been, but it also reminds us – painfully and beautifully – of what we do have.
When I look at that AI-edited photograph, I no longer see just the ache of what is missing.
I see a reminder to hold on tighter to what is here.
To take my son’s paediatrician’s advice to heart, to capture not just staged portraits but the raw, messy, everyday magic: my son’s first giggles, the way his tiny fingers curl around mine, and the sparkle in my parents’ eyes as they watch him grow.
One day, these too will become memories.
One day, my son will look back on the photographs and see not only his own growth but also the constellation of love that surrounded him.
He will know his great-grandmother through a picture that is not real but feels true.
He will know his great-grandfathers through the stories I tell and through the values we live by.
And he will know his grandparents not just through words or images but through years of shared presence.
Perhaps that is the lesson of all this: AI can stitch together the past and the present, offering us bittersweet glimpses into universes we cannot enter.
But it is our task to treasure the universe we are given – the one where love is not imagined but lived.
And so I cry when I look at that photograph.
I cry for the moments that will never be, for the people my son will never meet, and for the ache of time’s unrelenting march.
But I also cry with gratitude.
Gratitude that my parents are here, that my son is here, that I am here, able to witness the unfolding of this life.
AI may show us what could have been.
But love – real, present and enduring love – reminds us to treasure what is.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at sarahhafizahchandra@gmail.com.
