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I remember a night a few years ago, when one of my good friends asked his wife, (also my good friend) how many saved voicemails she had in her cell phone. She had about a dozen, while he apparently had only two or three. At any given moment, I probably have between 11 and 22. Right now, I have 16.
Each time my Dad, or my husband, or a close friend leaves a voicemail, I save it. I’ll continue to re-save it until that person leaves another voicemail. It doesn’t really matter what the message is, and I have saved more “I’m on my way home, see you soon” messages from my husband than I can count. I need to know I have at least one message saved from each person I love.
My friend, with the large stash of saved voicemails, lost her brother just a few months after I lost Mom. I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure she does it for the same reason I do.
After my Mom died, it took me a while to recognize all of the things that I lost when I lost her. There are the obvious things, like not having someone to send a card to on Mother’s Day. There were the less obvious things, like no longer having someone who would always understand and empathize with the fact that it wasn’t fair that I could still get pimples when I was starting to get wrinkles around my eyes.
And then there are the things no one can possibly tell you. Like the fact that no one would ever care as much as she would have how pretty my hair looked on my wedding day. And the realization that no matter how many photos I had (a lot) or how many pieces of her jewelry I wore to work each week (more than reasonable) there were some things that were just gone forever.
I don’t have any recording of Mom’s voice. Not one of the hundreds of voicemails she left to tell me she loved me, or ask where I wanted to eat when I came to visit. Not a single poor-quality VHS tape of her singing Happy Birthday to me or my brother. Nothing.
I would give anything to hear her say my name, or ask for a glass of water, or yell at the cat for knocking something over. No one ever tells you how much value a voice holds, and that there is nothing that will fill the void that it leaves.
So I save too many voicemails now. They are my security blanket. Because if I have them, those people can’t leave me entirely, no matter what. I will always have a little tiny something to hold onto.
And sometimes a little tiny something can be the thing that keeps you sane.
20 Comments:
FINALLY! Someone else gets it! My voicemail box is usually full, and it annoys everyone around me, but I do the exact same thing you do.
I am lucky enough to have one from my dad. All it says is, “Hi Babe, just calling to check in. Mmbye.” I can’t delete it, even though I found a way to put it on a tape. I just can’t risk that it would go away and I would lose access to his accent, his rhythms, anything. I cried when I bought a new cell phone because I thought I would lose it, and the man at Verizon had to comfort me. Ha!
Thanks for writing such an affrming article
Oh my goodness, I do the same thing!! I thought I was the only one. My husband thinks it is so weird but I like having at least 1 for all of my loved ones.
Another amazing article, Alisha
I still had 2 of my late husband’s voice mails from 3 years ago on my phone until a week ago. I downloaded them onto my computer (and do regular backups) to keep forever. His cancer caused him to become very hostile towards the end, but these voice mails were from early on when he was loving. So, it helps me remember the times “before cancer.” Comforting.
Dear Alisha,
You have had another “moment”with me from 1000 miles…I save voicemails too! Unfortunately, not one of my husbands.
However we [the 3 kids & I]still have his pager # memorized 855-6662.It is similar to voicemails because it was our connection to him as he dashed from place to place…we knew he was just a call away…how I wish he could answer that page today.
Thanks for your insightful article about your Mom
& articulating what you have lost.This helps so much.
Angela
My mom used to record us kids and bring it to the hospital for Nana to listen to. She never thought to have Nana turn the cassette tape over and record her own voice. My mom always told me her biggest regret was not having her mom record something on cassette when she was dying in the hospital. This stuck with me.
Back when we still had a land line with a digital answering machine, I liked to keep some messages from my Mom on there. When she called me at midnight new year’s (we always called each other on new years) and left me a sweet and funny message, I was out celebrating. For some reason I kept that one and a few weeks later she was in the hospital again and had to be trached for good. I would never hear her speak ever again. I would read her lips but she could only barely manage a whisper. She eventually died a couple years later but I still have that message she left me on the answering machine.
And because of that, I save voice messages from loved ones. Just in case.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. It helps to know I’m not alone.
-Tere
There is nothing more Beautiful then a LOVED ones voice calling your name..
GREAT article !
May we all listen more closely and HIT the rewind button in our head as needed..
This is interesting, because I don’t have s voicemail of my mom before she died, but just a recorded message of her, from her phone. My sister and I bought her the phone for mother’s day because her old one was a ratty piece of you-know-what, and she was playing with all the new features on her phone. Well, after she passed I turned on her phone to see if I needed any phone numbers or anything off it, and I found a voice recording she’d made. “Hello Kaitlin, this is your mommy I love you goodbye.” I play it all the time over and over again, it brings me comfort all the time. I have it saved on multiple devices so that I never, ever lose it.
Oh, Grief, how you always find new ways to make an appearance…I logged into my old hotmail account today. I had saved a lot of emails that Mom and I had sent back and forth, and wanted to read a particular one.
Surprise! Hotmail deletes all emails from “inactive” accounts. So, now no voicemails, no emails, just memories.
Maybe this is my lesson that memories can be enough.
I guess we all have special ways to cope with death. I grew up in California and my parents lived there until Mothers’ death. Then i brought my Father home with me 1500 miles from our place.
Dad lived 10 months and then he had to leave me too. It has been 15 years since their deaths. I just pretend that they are alive and happy in California. Some days I say to myself,” I wonder why Mom never calls. I can picture them at home happy and alive. Guess It is make believe, but it has helped me Sandy
Alisha,
Wow! I don’t feel so alone now. I thought I was the only one who did this sort of thing. I remember coming back home after being out of town for my son’s funeral. We were gone for almost two weeks due to the whole situation of his murder. I was listening to all the voicemails that had been left while we were gone and then BOOM out of seemingly know where, there is one from my son, it was a short one “mom, call me when you get this, I love you”…it had been there since three weeks before his murder. I would play it over and over for days right after his death. Then a month or so had gone by and I was going through voicemail again and deleting messages and when it came to his message, I accidentally hit the wrong button and just as quickly, I lost it forever. I was so upset and still cry that I can’t hear him anymore. I got a big suprise a couple of days ago. His girlfriend who still won’t give me his things, had sent me a message on facebook, out of the blue. It simply said, ” I thought you might like to have this”. ..and guess what, it was from our last christmas with Jeremy….I had forgotten that her brother was there and he had recorded some video on his camera…and I hear my son talking to his kids as they open their presents…it was such a blessing to me to get that and especially from her.
On another note, my grandmother (my mom’s mom)passed away in 1987 when my daughter was six weeks old. Right after her funeral, we were at my uncle’s house and he remembered that his daughter had to interview my grandma for one of her classes in high school. Thankfully my uncle still had that cassette. I sat there that night and copied it and have listened to it many times. She talks about when and how she grew up and many other things. It is such a great thing to have.
I just got back from czc camp today and in my healing circle with pete as my leader someone mentioned they have a phone of their loved one that they call just to hear te voice recording and that sounded so amazing to me. Now I am saving all my voice mails and hope to soon have all my love ones!
Hi, my mom just recently passed away on July 31st. And it’s been really hard. I’m now entering the 8th Grade… She took me to school everyday. But what made me the most upset is a week before she died we got a family plan and it said you have reached the voicemail box. And she would say her name. I don’t even have it recorded…. I wish I had it. but I do have a video of her saying her name. And a picture of her in my phone. Since it was new, I had to try it out. And the very FIRST picture I took was of her… Yes, Voice does value. I talk to her alot more than people I live with. I hear her faint voice but it’s not enough to suffice… I’m so sorry.
I do a similar thing with emails. People often say ‘You give the best hugs’- I don’t know whether they know why I do that, but I guess you guys do. Thanks for making it feel normal.
When my mom died last year I recorded her cell phone voicemail greeting onto a tape so that I would never loose her voice. She lost her father at an early age and saved everyone’s voicemail too. In her voicemail greeting she says that she loves me, can’t wait to see me and wishes everyone a blessed day. She was a beautiful woman.
Growing up, my mom woke us up for school by bursting into our bedrooms & singing. After she unexpectedly died last month, I discovered I had randomly saved a voicemail of her singing me “Happy Birthday” from months before. Now every morning when I wake up, I hear her sing through that voicemail.
Well said.. I’ve always done this…
This makes me feel more normal. I started doing this more than four years ago when I was a freshman in high school. Since then (because I refuse to use the phones afterward in case they get lost or stolen) I have accumulated three phones that have nothing but a voicemail each on them.
My older brother was hit by a drunk driver and was killed on impact. It was three days before my fifteenth birthday. A couple days before his accident, my brother and I had gotten into a fight. We lived nearly 1500 miles apart and didn’t get to see each other too often. He had called to tell me that he wouldn’t be coming to visit for my birthday as planned because he was going to spend Thanksgiving with his fiance’s family. I was not pleased and pitched a bit of a fit about it. I was so angry with him that I didn’t answer his phone call after I hung up on him. I didn’t even listen to the voicemail until about a week after his funeral. I’d never been so happy to be scolded and being the guy that he was (after his rant about how much of a brat I was being) he told me he loved me and that he’d see me at Christmas.
After that, I started saving voicemails. I hoped I would never need them, but it was comforting to know that I had a piece of the people I loved in case the worst happened. And happen it did. One of my best friends died in a motorcycle wreck after driving me to school less than a year later. His voicemail was just him letting me know he was picking me up for school in the morning and not to keep him waiting. He ended it in his normal “Love you, baby girl.” and that message meant so much to me after his accident and I wished more than anything I had been running late when he picked me up the next morning. If I had, I’d still have my best friend.
The last message was saved only six months ago. My brother’s best friend, who had been like another brother to me since birth, was calling to let me know that his latest doctor’s appointment went well and that he was in remission. Six weeks later he was in the ICU and he never made it back out. He died less than a week after his 25th birthday.
I keep those old phones because I have pictures and old clothes, but something about hearing their voices helps me feel like they’re still with me.
I searched long and hard for my mother in all my voicemails to no avail. I had accidentally deleted her spoken words forever. Then today to my delight… I found the last voicemail she ever left me hidden away in an email from my VOIP provider… just a few simple sentences to comfort me.
Mom saying my name and reminding me that she is my mother.
Although I was with my Momma when she passed in hospital she could not speak with her voice and that single voicemail offers some comfort from the wanting to hear her those last few days.
Even though Momma communicated with her eyes and her smile and even in written words some of the time during that time it was the sound of her sweet voice that I longed for the most.
There is a free service http://www.voicemailtoheaven.com that allows you to capture the outgoing voicemail message of someone you’ve lost. My cousin used it when a friend of hers died unexpectedly and she shared the recording with all of their friends.
–>Tony…
Thank you for sharing this information, however, it does not seem to work. I filled out all the information that was requested, and never got a validation email. Thinking I put in a wrong email, I did it again with another email that I have, but still no validation email. If there is anyone that has had this work I would really love to hear from you @ redrocker07@gmail.com
Thank you so much