Goh Ling Yong : I Am the Executor of My Father's Watch History - Goh Ling Yong
Title: Goh Ling Yong : I Am the Executor of My Father's Watch History
Subtitle: Grief in the age of the 'Continue Watching' row.
It’s been six months, and my father’s ghost lives in our television. It’s not a haunting, not in the traditional sense. There are no cold spots or flickering lights. Instead, his presence is a horizontal line of digital thumbnails under the heading, “Goh’s Profile: Continue Watching.”
Every evening, when I turn on the TV to escape into someone else’s story, I am first confronted with the last stories he was watching. There’s a British documentary on Roman aqueducts, paused at the 22-minute mark. There’s a Jason Statham movie where he’s just thrown a man through a plate-glass window—frozen mid-flight, a silent explosion of pixels. And there is Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, episode seven, the progress bar a patient red line, stopped exactly halfway through.
The first few weeks, I would navigate past it as quickly as possible, a clumsy jab of the remote’s arrow key, my thumb fumbling to get to my own profile. It felt like walking past his empty bedroom and averting my eyes. An intrusion. A space that was still his, humming with the faint electrical charge of his last choices. I am the executor of his will, his bank accounts, the box of old army medals in his cupboard. I did not realize I would also become the executor of his watch history.
The Inheritance of the Incomplete
What does one do with an inheritance of unfinished narratives? My first instinct was to seek closure on his behalf. One Tuesday night, after a particularly draining day at work, I clicked on his profile. The screen refreshed, populated by his algorithm—a world of historical epics, gritty crime procedurals, and the occasional, inexplicable cooking show.
I scrolled to Midnight Diner.
If you haven't seen it, the show is a quiet balm. Each episode centres on a small, 12-seat diner in Shinjuku that only opens from midnight to 7 a.m. The owner, a stoic man with a scar over his eye, will make anything his customers request, as long as he has the ingredients. The stories are small, human-scale dramas about lonely office workers, aging gangsters, and struggling actors, all connected by a simple dish: fried rice, a rolled omelet, a bowl of noodles.
I pressed play. He was halfway through an episode about a radio announcer who orders a simple bowl of kitsune udon every night. As the story unfolded, I tried to watch it through his eyes. Did he appreciate the subtle cinematography? Did he, a man who expressed his love through sliced fruit and ensuring my car’s tires were always properly inflated, see himself in the quiet, supportive presence of the diner's Master?
I found myself leaning forward, as if I could absorb his leftover attention from the cushions of the sofa. I wasn’t just watching a show; I was sitting shiva with a streaming service. When the credits rolled, a strange sense of accomplishment washed over me. I had finished it for him. One down. I had brought one of his small, final journeys to its destination.
An Unwatchable Archive
My self-appointed task soon hit a snag. The Jason Statham movie. I tried. I really did. I poured a glass of water, settled in, and pressed play. The man who had been frozen mid-air for weeks finally crashed through the window. Cars exploded. Dialogue was barked. My father loved these movies. He loved the clean, simple physics of them, the predictable arc of good guy versus bad guy, the catharsis of a well-choreographed fight.
Growing up, we’d watch them together. He’d sit in his worn armchair, me on the floor, and he’d point out the impossibly bad aim of the henchmen. “See? Wasting bullets,” he’d murmur, a small smile playing on his lips.
But watching it alone was just… noise. The plot was thin, the action relentless. Twenty minutes in, I felt my attention fraying. This wasn't a shared experience; it was an obligation. This part of him, the part that just wanted to see things blow up, felt inaccessible to me now. I couldn’t find the connection. I turned it off, leaving the progress bar just a little further along than he had. The digital ghost and I had failed to connect. The movie remains on the list, a monument to the parts of our parents we love but will never fully understand.
It occurred to me then that this digital archive was more than just a list of shows. It was a perfect, unfiltered cross-section of a person’s mind in their final days: their curiosities, their comforts, their fleeting distractions. Grief is often about the big, sweeping speeches we wish we’d made, the grand questions left unanswered. But here was the small data of a life. The quiet, unremarkable choices that actually fill our days.
The Archaeologist of the Algorithm
My mission changed. I was no longer a closer of loops, but an archaeologist. I clicked on his viewing history, a feature he probably never knew existed. It was like finding a hidden diary.
I scrolled back weeks, then months. I saw the night he binged three episodes of a Korean drama I’d recommended, the one he’d claimed was “too sentimental.” There it was, undeniable proof. I smiled. I saw the documentary about deep-sea fish he’d watched after we’d had calamari at a hawker centre. I could trace conversations we’d had through the things he’d chosen to watch later that night. His digital life was a quiet echo of his real one.
I scrolled further and found things that surprised me. A series on minimalist architecture. A stand-up special from a comedian I’d never heard of. A nature documentary about migratory birds that he’d abandoned after ten minutes. Why that one? Was he bored? Did the phone ring? Did he get up to make a cup of tea and simply forget to come back?
These digital footprints were all that was left of his idle curiosity. We think of a person's legacy as the things they built, the family they raised, the impact they had. But it’s also this: a haphazard collection of started stories, a library of curiosities, a testament to the thousand quiet nights spent in a favourite chair, bathed in the soft blue glow of a screen. It’s a map of a mind at rest.
Leaving the Ghost in the Machine
My mother asked me last week if we should cancel his profile to save a few dollars. It was a practical question from a practical woman. For a moment, I considered it. It would be cleaner. My own "Continue Watching" row would be the first thing I saw. The TV would belong entirely to the living.
But I heard myself say, “No, let’s keep it. Just for a while longer.”
I’ve stopped trying to finish his shows. The Roman aqueducts will forever remain half-explained. Jason Statham will never get his revenge, at least not on my watch. Their incompletion no longer feels like a task I need to perform, but a truth I need to accept. A life is not a story that always gets a neat ending. We are all, in the end, a collection of unfinished things.
Now, I see his profile and I don’t rush past it. I let my eyes linger for a moment. It’s a digital memorial, more honest than any eulogy. It’s not the curated, polished version of a man, but the everyday, slightly messy, quietly curious reality. The man who loved history, and explosions, and gentle Japanese fables. The man who was willing to give a sentimental Korean drama a try, just because his son told him to.
I click over to my own profile. My own list of half-finished shows awaits. I press play on my own life, my own stories. And in the machine, my father’s profile remains. Not a ghost to be exorcised, but a presence to be lived with. A quiet reminder that the story isn’t over. The progress bar is just paused.
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