I can hear you

Photo credit: Rachel Stein

Yesterday marked a year since our little tabby cat died. We home-hospice(d) her for three weeks. It was rough to watch her decline and at the same time we were grateful to be able to let her die and leave us at her own pace. 

July 2020 overall was a rough month for me. A few days after Brianna died, so did my dad’s wife. She was one of the sweetest ladies ever and I loved her. With all the day to day life and death of 2020 I have yet to mourn her properly. For the past few years my life has known a bevy of lost loved ones. I have collected a queue of those waiting to be mourned. To stay afloat after receiving the news of my latest loss, I went online to search for a friend from my youth, hoping to maybe see she was well. We had known each other as teens. She had a troubled family life that had put her on the wrong side of society. Our last connection was over the phone in our twenties when I was passing through and in between my husband’s overseas assignments. Her life had taken even more downward spins and she didn’t want me to associate with her. She had fashioned herself long ago as my protective big sister. Undaunted, I went to her house. Her mother told me through a barely opened door, my friend wasn’t home and who knew when she would be. That was that.  

My online search had a sad ending. Her mother was dead. Her brother was dead. A few years ago, she too, had died. I don’t know why she died so young. She looked happy in her later pictures. She seemed to have at last found happiness and a husband who loved her. He died about a year after her. Her little daughter whom I had seen once when we were both young mothers taking our little girls to the same home babysitter was now grown and looked just like my friend. Beautiful.

July 2020 was too full of grief and dying for me to share any of this, so I searched for ways to mitigate my sadness. I found creative courses and social groups online. I endeavored to stay my healthiest and encouraged my loved ones to do likewise. With our wagons circled, my main focus was to keep my family and myself healthy and alive. Thank Goodness. Second, was to keep our spirits up, but July 2020 had another hit with my name on it. 

For years I have had a three part bundle landline phone service with cable and internet. Throughout the years I get little upgrades and discounts to merit keeping it that way. Years ago, a landline had merit for tracing the call in an emergency, now it’s simply a matter of being a little bit cheaper and one less thing to worry about doing.

 Like most people I know, my cell is my truer contact number. Besides solicitors, there were three people who contacted me on the house phone. My daughter, my husband, and my mother all liked to call me on the landline. I had years of their recorded messages, not many, maybe two dozen. Spread out over the years, they were an audio chronology of our intense relationships. I liked knowing they were there. Ever so often, the system required me to refresh them. I investigated how to save them but was overwhelmed by the technical aspect. What if I accidentally deleted them? No, leave them. Sometimes I would re-listen to them and savor them. More recently, after each of their passings I couldn’t bear to listen. But, I WANTED TO KEEP THEM until I could once again find peace in hearing them. Sometimes it would take days, even weeks, for me to force myself to even rush through the system, and without listening, refresh them all again. 

With all that was going on in July 2020, I did not know my phone company was no longer waiting for me to refresh at my leisure. I missed the new deadline! Every single message was deleted. Every single one. It had only been three months since my mother’s death. My only recordings of her voice speaking directly to me were gone forever. Her happy birthday greetings to me. Her annoyance that I wasn’t returning her calls. (That was on her caption telephone, not on me; some kind of glitch that my house number wasn’t being recognized.) Her awkward, “I love yous.” All gone.

The husband/ex-husband’s calls. The loving calls, the angry calls, the everyday I-bought-the-milk calls. All gone. 

My daughter’s calls. The sad and I’m lonely calls, the I need money calls, the I just called to say I love you calls.

All gone.

July 2020 was a rough month for me.

The other day I was on my phone refreshing my memory on how to do voice recordings. I have a work related project coming up and being able to record audio would be nice. It had been two years since I had done anything with that feature. Sitting right there and saved over from the house phone voicemails were my daughter’s calls!  

EUREKA! 

Thankfully, the year following her death I had figured out how to and had bravely saved her calls. Tucked away in that feature and tucked away again in a digital folder, there they were.

Unlike last year, July 2021 has been a good month for me. 

I preempted it with intentions to look daily for something good to come my way. Like the sourcer (one who attracts things from Source) I am, I have attracted good. Money, new friends, powerful insights, and renewed connections have all come my way. keine hara, poo-poo-poo, and hamsa, hamsa!!! (There, that should cover it.)

And my daughter’s sweet voice and her sweet messages! 

I played them over and over. I downloaded them, copied them, and sent them to myself on other platforms. They warm my heart. They give me peace. I am grateful. 

My daughter, I can hear you.

(The End.)

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