When I wrote about
letter writing a few weeks ago, I received several comments about phone
calls. Voices. Just as handwriting is unique to each writer,
and it gives us an indelible, eternal piece of someone, the human voice is the same. A baby comes into the world knowing his
mother’s voice, and being calmed by it.
Voices are distinct and recognizable - - an inseparable part of each
person. And something we long to cling
to after they're gone.
I recently read The
First Phone Call From Heaven by Mitch Albom. The story is set in the town of Coldwater,
Michigan, where several people begin receiving telephone calls from familiar
voices of deceased loved ones. Albom
shifts throughout the book between the invention of the telephone in 1876, and
the current day happenings of the town of Coldwater.
Albom writes, “The
news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged,
a tragic accident on a late-night highway -- most milestones of the human
journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of ringing.” He also recounts the first phone call
from Bell to Watson, in which Bell simply said, "Come here, I want to
see you.” Albom goes on to state, “In
the uncountable human phone conversations since then, the concept has never
been far from our lips. Come here. I want to see you.
Impatient lovers. Long-distance friends. Grandparents talking
to grandchildren. The telephone voice is by a seduction, a bread crumb to
an appetite. Come here. I want to see you.”
For several years
before my father passed away, he would often call me – at least once a week –
in the morning hours after Jeff had left for work and the kids were at
school. I can still hear his familiar
voice as I answered the phone, saying, “What’s going on over there?” Quickly followed by, “How are the little
shavers?” Those calls were always brief,
and never about anything important – they were simply a father checking in with
his daughter for a few quiet moments between them. During the first few months after his death,
if my phone rang about 10 in the morning, I would have that momentary feeling
of, “That’s probably Daddy…” before my reality would envelope me that he was never
calling me again. It was the ringing of
that same phone that brought the voice of my brother telling me that Daddy was
gone. And interestingly, my brother’s
voice sounds hauntingly similar to my dad’s – sometimes when my brother calls,
it gives me momentary pause.
This morning, I
received a phone call from a long-distance friend who lives over a thousand
miles away. She and I rarely see one
another, and we don’t even get to talk on the phone that often. But when I hear her familiar voice on the
other end of the phone, time and distance seem to evaporate. We talked for over two hours this morning
about a wide variety of topics ranging from the serious to the mundane. They were two hours well-spent, because at
the end of that conversation I felt refreshed, encouraged, and loved. All because of the back-and-forth of our
voices. As special as a letter can be, there’s
no substitute for the sound of a beloved voice.
Albom’s book is a
work of fiction. We all know that there
are no phone calls from heaven. But
those of us who have lost loved ones tend to cling to recordings of those
voices for the same reasons, I believe, that we treasure their handwritten
letters. It’s a piece of them.
I won’t spoil the
ending of Albom’s book, but it is very interesting how the characters in the
book progress. The phone calls do
eventually come to an end, but as Albom concludes, “Although the town was
largely saddened by the loss of heavenly voices, no one seemed to notice how,
in their own way, the calls had steered people to just what they needed.”
We call out; we are answered. It has been that way from the beginning...no soul remembered is ever really gone.”
One character in
Albom’s book receives a phone call from her deceased mother, and the following
conversation ensues:
“Do you still feel things in heaven, Mom?”
“Love.”
“Anything else?”
“A waste of time, Tess.”
“What is?”
“Anything else.”
So true. Anything besides Love is a waste of
time. So as I encouraged you in my last entry, write a letter. But then, make a phone call. Say “I love you.” Listen to the sound of the other voice. Leave nothing unsaid. Make a memory that will last long after your voice is silenced by death.
“The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the (ones)
we love.” ~Jean de la Bruyere
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