I am not talking about global climate change, the impeachment of the president of the United States or even the important local issue of hiker and climber parking in the town of Keene. No, this is personal. This is the last time I will be using my laptop, an early 2014 MacBook Air.

I say “my laptop,” but it never really was mine. It belongs to the company I work for, and now, as it is no longer necessary to the work I am doing, the time has come for me to give it back. It is all quite logical and sensible. Who could have guessed that we would grow so attached, MacBook and I?

Six years ago I drove to Vermont and chose MacBook at Small Dog Electronics, picking it out from all of the other Apple computers on display. Since then, unwittingly, we have grown close.

I admit I used to take MacBook for granted. Up until recently I believed myself invulnerable to the charms of technology. I told people that no, I was not addicted to my iPhone. I can’t understand why people would trust Alexa spying on them in their own homes, I said. Blah, blah, blah. I thought I was superior, invulnerable to the commonplace dependence on newfangledness. Now I see that I have grown dependent on MacBook without even realizing it. And the guilt!

Tomorrow I will take MacBook to Plattsburgh be wiped. Not quite like taking a dog in to be put to sleep-or euthanized, if you prefer- but I mean, still-the Geek Squad will lobotomize MacBook. Afterward, MacBook will look the same-dented, where I accidentally dropped it in the parking lot. Recognizable, not cookie cutter perfect, now that it is older. It will sit on a counter at work, looking like my MacBook, but it will no longer know me.

This is not the first time I have loved an inanimate object, experiencing the pain of separation and guilt when the time came to part.

I felt like a cad, leaving my old Honda Fit in New Hampshire at the auto dealership, trading it in for a younger model. It was such a good, reliable little car, the little engine that could, but it was 11 years old and starting to fall apart. Rust is such a problem up here in the North Country.

My childhood doll, Christmas Carol, sits in my living room, staring at me accusingly. You are so mid century, Christmas Carol. So am I.

And I love my robot vacuum cleaner. Jupiter the cat stalks it as it zips around the room bumping into the furniture. I always thank the robot after it motors back to its charger and turns itself off.

After it’s wiped, MacBook will no longer automatically show me the soapmaking materials I need, the seed catalogs I depend on to get me through the winter, the weather for my area, the news for Ventura, California, where My grandchildren live, the kind of shoes I like, the political news I crave. It will no longer know me. It will sit there on the desk, oblivious.

Like your best friend from high school, who has amnesia. Like your favorite uncle who now has Alzheimer’s. Am I making too much of this?

MacBook is just sitting there, minding its own business. Slender, silvery case shielding an exquisite bran, totally dependable, always loyal, at my beck and call. I was a reference librarian, once. Even in my prime, fresh out of library school, I could never have lived up to what MacBook can do. We still used books back then. We called them reference tools. We studied shelving. The pity of it.

I will never access MacBook again. I couldn’t. It will be hard enough to look at it. I will never, ever, Google anything on MacBook again, after I take it in to be wiped. I would not be able to bear it.

Wiped. A casual word for such a monstrous undertaking. Six years together, and it will mean nothing.

MacBook doesn’t even know. I am going to take it in to be wiped tomorrow, and MacBook doesn’t even know. Or maybe it does. Thank you for everything, MacBook.

Have a good week.