I was speculating a few weeks back that it would be pretty spooky to listen to a voice mail from someone who had died.
Well, it seems that not everyone thinks along the same lines.I picked up this story on Forum Oxford - the free-to-join discussion group with many of the industry’s luminaries taking an active part. Why not join today?
The story tells the tale of an 80 year old man, whose wife died in 2005. Ever since, he’d been phoning her voicemail every day, just to hear her say “”Catherine Whiting” again.
But then the carrier, Verizon, upgraded and the message was lost.
However, the story has a nice ending, if it can be described as such in the circumstances. Good old Verizon restored things for the old chap and he says:
“I’m glad they rescued it……I’m very happy.”
Ahhh.
Maybe Verizon should make a TV ad about it and borrow the classic 80’s Yellow Pages strapline “It’s not just there for the bad things in life’. Verizon could do with a nice “human face” to the corporation and maybe they go round doing nice things all the time that we just don’t hear about.
I appreciate that the last sentance seems unlikely, but give them the benefit of the doubt for once!
In the same vein, my mother’s been using my grandma’s mobile phone as an emergency phone for over a year now. After transferring the account from my grandma’s name into her own, she noticed the voicemail greeting was an old one. None of us have had the heart to change it and since it’s so rare that the phone is used, the greeting remains, and will continue to be there until we close the account I suppose.
When I borrowed the phone, there were also two SMSs from the network dating from 2005 and 2006, wishing her a happy birthday. No one had opened the messages since they didn’t know it even existed…
On a similar note, I was listening to a biographical programme last night on BBC Radio 4 about the late actor and entertainer, Kenneth Williams.
A friend of his played some messages he’d left on the friend’s ansafone - very amusing they were too.
Russell
I can actually comment from a personal experience. About 2 years ago my father passed away (at 63 years old) suddenly. My sister had been living abroad for 6 month prior and luckily had returned only a week before we lost him. As such she didn’t have a US cell phone, so she started using his. For about 2 weeks after the funeral, every time I called her, she picked up. But then, I called and got the voicemail - which was his voice. It literally floored me. It was my Dad’s voice, the one I never expected to hear again.
My mother died suddenly just before Christmas in 2004. I have her last voice mail message to me still on my cell and every 30 days the system will offer to delete it for me. I never do even though it’s not particularly sentimental (and she never says “I love you” which sometimes I wish she had). Still, it comes up as a surprise sometimes when I seem to need it most. I suspect many more people have done this than we hear of in the news.
There IS something about how the unique sound of a voice passes the critical censors in our brains - the ones that rationally “firewall” our thoughts from even our conscious selves sometimes. That’s why it has such power to move us.
I still have my late wife’s voice on our home answering machine. She died suddenly at 45 in Oct of 2006. I am re-recording some music we made together, and that greeting will be in the cd. It is sad, but it is her speaking, and her greeting is funny too. I totally understand this guy and the cell phone message.
First thing I would do is record that message on tape, cd, mp3, whatever!
Moving story though.
Years back, my girlfiend at the time was working with this girl who was dating an older (but not old) guy. This guy was into drugs and got a bad batch of something and passed away at a fairly young age. Anyways, she had some voicemails from him that she would play over and over. I tried to put myself in her shoes and thought how obsessed I would become with something like voicemails from a lost loved one.
Thanks for the comments everyone - it seems that this is something far more widespread than is generally believed.
Some very moving stories.
Russell
My father died of cancer in 1998 and I never really got to know him, although we tried to become friends during his final months. My (then) stepmother stopped answering the phone after his death and I would call the house just to listen to his voice on the answering machine. I completely understand how the guy feels, even with the difference in relation to our dearly departed.
my mama passed away after a 9 month long dance with death. from the moment she became sick, i began saving every message she would leave for me & by doing so, i had quite a collection by the time she let go of life.
i listened to them over & over again until they were accidentally deleted by qwest. i was told they couldn’t be recovered & regretfully, i never transferred them anywhere else by way of not knowing how to do so.
i miss those messages but not as much as i miss her.
Conversely, when I went to India a couple of years back, and our child was less than 2, my ex-wife called and left a nice long voicemail on my cell prompting my infant son to say Hi to me. He got some funny words out, but you could hear the excitement in his voice. I listened to that voicemail pretty regularly over the next 1.5 years, re-saving it every 30 days to avoid deletion. And then I forgot, and it got deleted.. For a child who’s life is chronicled on Flickr with 2400 photos, it’s no real loss. But I completely understand everyone’s inclinations recorded here.
Along the same line. I got back from living abroad a month or so ago and found over a hundred text messages on my US cell phone from my boyfriend (then and still). My cell phone now tells me everytime I get a new text that i have to delete an old one. I started with “Heys” but stopped because each written word meant something to me. Someone thought of me. And so I am doing something I have never done before. Keeping sort of a text “diary.” Before I delete one of his messages I type it up on my computer. That way I can always have those words: of laughter, suspense, anticipation, frustration, hope, love, etc. I am so thankful I still have him in my life and pray I will for a LONG time. But i think it is as important, if not more, to cherish the words of the living as it is those of the dead. I love him, and each text message spells out another reason why. I’m up to 127 right now
Off course they restored it. He makes a call every day, it’s free money for the phone company
There was a special lady who touched everyone at a large (unnamed) company. She did the voicemail setups for several staff members. (She died of cancer three years ago.) To this day, her voice is the greeting to these peoples voicemailboxes.
It’s 80s NOT 80’s. Jesus.
And it’s grammar, not gramma, oh troll.
It’s actually ’80s. If you’re going to correct somebody, you might try knowing what the hell you’re talking about before you start yapping.
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