The simple act of cleaning out my voicemail messages leads to an unexpected surprise on Valentine’s Day.
(phone message):
“Hi Ell. It’s Dad. We’re getting ready to go down and get something to eat.
I thought about you and I miss you and I want you to call me as soon as you can so we can
stay happy. Love you Ellen.”
On February 14th 2024, I decided to clean out the
voicemails in my phone. I did this from time to time, usually after hearing from
someone that they tried calling and leaving a message but my voicemail was
full. I had always made sure to delete all my messages whenever I did a purge,
and so it was surprising for me to see two old messages resurface from
2018 that I had discarded. One was from my brother Larry, and the other was from
my father. Larry’s message was interesting and kind of eerily timely. My
mother had moved in with me and my family and to say that in recent weeks
that there were tensions would have been an understatement. In my brother’s message,
he described some of the challenges that he had experienced with my mother during
a recent visit to see her and my dad. He advised me to try to be understanding
with her as she was dealing with my father’s illness at the time and it made
her sad, and she also had difficulty remembering things. My father’s message
was short, but his message to me haunting. It was the sweetest and most unexpected
Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever received. To have both messages come back from
what I believed was a permanent discard made me wonder. Were the two messages
somehow connected? Was my brother’s message my father’s way of expressing
concern over my mother and our living arrangement? Did my father want me to
know that he was still there and watching over us? I had made it no secret
to anyone how much I wanted a sign that this was true. The 32 second message from
my father was one that I had thoughtlessly discarded years ago,
thinking at the time that it was expendable. I’d see my dad again the next
time I visited. I’d have the chance to talk to him the next time either one of us
picked up a phone.
There were lots of conversations between me and my father over the phone
in the last 3 weeks before he passed away. Most of our conversations were
stressful. There was only one, our very last, that for whatever reason I promised
not to talk with him about any serious issues. Instead, we talked about our
mutual love of history and my father lectured me on the power of social media
and how we needed to make more use of it for a nonprofit to be successful. I
didn’t know at the time of that conversation that it would be our last.
I’m happy and relieved that we talked about things that were uplifting instead
of stressful. Three weeks later on a very sleepy Saturday morning, October 5th
2019, I received a call from my father. I saw his name on my phone and I almost
didn’t answer it because I was busy doing… something. And well, I could talk to
him anytime, right? Maybe later in the day… But something made me answer it, and it
wasn’t my father on the other end. It was his caretaker in a panic telling me that
my dad had stopped breathing and that the paramedics were there. He was placed
on artificial respiration. Please, I thought, fight this, dad. Be okay. The next
call I received was from the caretaker, telling me that he died at the hospital.
We’re not guaranteed later. We’re not guaranteed the next day. We’re not
guaranteed a few months from now. Six years ago, I received a simple message from my
dad, telling me that he loved me. Six years later I received his message again on
Valentine’s Day.
Dad, I love you too.
[Music: Hello It’s Me, by Todd Rundgren]
Hello, it’s me. I’ve thought about us for a long, long time. Maybe I think too much but
something’s wrong. There’s something here, doesn’t last too long. Maybe I shouldn’t
think of you as mine.
It’s important to me that you know you are free.