In going through the items I had stashed at the farm, I came across two old cell phones. One was Mr. FixIt’s. We were dating over a year when he switched to an iPhone so we could see each other on FaceTime while I traveled. However, during that first year, we talked back and forth often. We were laughing at the content of the texts…the majority of which went something like good mornings and how did you sleep and what are you going to do today? Funny how you think your early missives were filled with flowery romance and the reality was pretty much the same as our texts today. Which is a good thing. It means we haven’t tired of each other and we enjoy talking to each other the same as we did when we first started dating. 

We looked through the old pictures on his phone, many of which had been taken in the years prior to his divorce. It was fun to see the kids and how little they were. It was interesting to see the things that piqued his interest and prompted him to memorialize moments in a photo. There were SO many photos of sunrises and sunsets at the beach and I can see why going there means so much to him. There were pictures of the flowers that grow here at the Ponderosa. I love that we both have a penchant to take lots of pictures.

The other phone was the old one I had when Mr. Virgo was still living. I got a new one just a couple of month before he died. I remember one of the secondary losses I felt when I realized I had cleaned out my voicemails in the new phone just three days before he passed. I was devastated because those were the sweet messages. The ones he left on the house phone were a tad terse because he was trying both places and couldn’t find me. I have NO idea why it never occurred to me to look on my old phone for those messages, but it didn’t…until yesterday.

It took me a long time to unlock the phone. It has one of those patterns on the screen that you have to trace. Time, grief brain, a head injury, and just plain aging and I could not remember what the pattern was. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I finally let my muscle memory take over, got it opened, and looked in the contact list that I was sure it even WAS my phone. 

I wasn’t necessarily looking for the voicemails. I checked the photos first. I was hoping there would be more pictures on that phone, but there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been transferred over to the new phone. I looked in the emails. Nothing interesting there. Notes? Nah…just shopping lists and reminders to pick up the dry cleaning and phone number of the plumber. Ordinary stuff. The icons on a Droid are different than an iPhone and I wasn’t sure what I was clicking, but suddenly…up popped all my old voicemails.

It has been eight years since I heard his voice. There were about twelve voicemails from him…and they were the nice ones with the lilt in his voice. Not the all business “Where ARE you?” calls. I listened to every one. I believe there is a reason God didn’t let me find those sweet messages till now. If I would have heard them early on, it would have crushed me. It would have set me up for even greater longing and pain. And, knowing me, I may have obsessively listened to them over and over and over. Which in a way would have kept me stuck in mourning. 

As I listened to the messages yesterday, I was thrilled because I could just SEE him in my mind’s eye. The years have softened that memory. I couldn’t exactly hear his voice in my head anymore. I couldn’t actually SEE him in my head. He faded to a fuzzy version of himself…ghostlike and far from me. Hearing his voice yesterday allowed me to “see” him again and this time without the pain. It was like… “Ohhhhh, THERE you are! I remember you!” Like seeing an old friend…someone I loved very much. And now, I have something else to tuck away in a drawer…just to know it’s there. I may or may not listen to the messages again someday. But I don’t feel the compulsion to do so that I absolutely KNOW I would have if I’d known I could.

Yes, this was a memory meant for now. I’m glad I found him and now he’s safe in a drawer. Someday, when I’m dead and gone, one of the kids…or Mr. FixIt…will be going through my things and think, “Isn’t that odd? Keeping that old cell phone in there?” They’ll never get a chance to get it unlocked to find the treats that lay within. Some treasures are meant to be left alone.

?

“remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,”

Isaiah 46:9 ESV