My mother's voice

The cell phone I had just before the current one had a glitch. If I didn't retrieve my voice mail in exactly the right way, I had to listen to all the saved voice mails before the phone would deliver the new ones.

A few days after my mother died, I experienced that glitch, and it was her voice I heard,  a brief message that said something like, "Just checking in. Call me when you get home." We had a brief phone conversation every day in the last months of her life. Sometimes she called me early, while I was still on the way home with the phone turned off, and she would leave a message. I'd forgotten I had saved a few of them.

It was startling, even eerie, hearing the voice of someone whose death I was still trying to cope with. But it was comforting, too. This wasn't just a photograph or a fading letter. It was the actual sound of her, which had been such a big part of my life. I could close my eyes and almost imagine her sitting there next to me. Over the next year and a half, whenever I went through a bad spell of missing her, I'd listen to the saved messages and regain a sense of my mother.

Then my cell starting acting up. It held a charge for less and less time and finally wouldn't even take a charge. I took it to the phone store and had it checked -- there was something wrong with the connection. They weren't even able to retrieve and transfer my contact list. So I got a new phone and went home with it and my sick old phone. It still has a charge left -- of a few seconds to a couple of minutes. I can probably listen to my mother's voice one more time, but then it will be gone forever. So the phone just rests on a shelf, that connection to my past trapped inside and unheard.

I know you don't need me to tell you this, but it's something we all need to remind ourselves of periodically: With everybody we love, every time could be the last time. Every time we talk to them. Every time we see them. Every time we touch them. Every time we sit across the table from them or have a brief phone conversation with them. The hardware will fail, and the software will be lost, and you'll just be left with a fading memory on the shelf.

The greatest failing in life is to not pay attention when we have a chance to pay attention. Sunday is Mother's Day. If you stil have the chance, pay attention.