NFrameFred
Member
Let me say up front that the last thing I would want to do would be to add to someone else’s pain, so my apologies to anyone currently suffering through such.
We seem to have had an uptick in sad bereavement posts lately and Steelslaver’s current thread about his sister struck a chord. I’ll try to not boor everyone with a long screed, so I’ll abbreviate my own experience and regrets and confine them to just one.
My mom passed in mid-2020 and had been debilitated for a couple of years prior in her decline. My brother, wife, and I provided round the clock care as long as possible and she eventually went to a nursing facility during the pandemic before her passing. It wasn’t until months later as I was clearing junk from my phone I ran across a simple voicemail from her, where we were playing phone tag and had missed one another’s initial calls.
She basically said, “it’s just mom – I saw where you tried to call and was just returning the call – talk to you later – I love you”.
How precious that short message immediately became. My mom’s voice, telling me that she loved me. I made sure to save it on my phone and even downloaded it to a thumb drive for safe keeping. I still play it at times just to hear her voice and her words.
Just wanted to share the thought that one of my regrets is I didn’t think of recording the voices of my deceased loved ones until after it was too late. Everyone has a cell phone and voicemail these days; simple voice recording apps are generally included in the phone’s software or easily obtained for little or nothing. But so often, to reduce clutter and make space we discard those messages or 'meaningless' clips, not imagining it might be the last time. How precious and comforting to have something like that from all of them would be. How simple but valuable to our loved ones to arrange to leave them such a comforting memory.
I only post this in the hopes it might cause “the light to come on” for some folks and encourage them to do what I wish I could easily have done before it was no longer possible. Video clips and home movies . . . all the things we had time for that just got overlooked or passed over in the rush of life. My mom was self conscious and didn't like being in front of the camera so we tend to give them their space and respect that. But I could have found ways to do it without being morbid about it. We take pictures, but audio and video are valuable in their own right.
Again, would hate to think this post upsets anyone and, just maybe, does something to bring some comfort to some. None of us are promised another breath and we all travel that common road.
Qui Plantavit Curabit – Memento Mori
.
We seem to have had an uptick in sad bereavement posts lately and Steelslaver’s current thread about his sister struck a chord. I’ll try to not boor everyone with a long screed, so I’ll abbreviate my own experience and regrets and confine them to just one.
My mom passed in mid-2020 and had been debilitated for a couple of years prior in her decline. My brother, wife, and I provided round the clock care as long as possible and she eventually went to a nursing facility during the pandemic before her passing. It wasn’t until months later as I was clearing junk from my phone I ran across a simple voicemail from her, where we were playing phone tag and had missed one another’s initial calls.
She basically said, “it’s just mom – I saw where you tried to call and was just returning the call – talk to you later – I love you”.
How precious that short message immediately became. My mom’s voice, telling me that she loved me. I made sure to save it on my phone and even downloaded it to a thumb drive for safe keeping. I still play it at times just to hear her voice and her words.
Just wanted to share the thought that one of my regrets is I didn’t think of recording the voices of my deceased loved ones until after it was too late. Everyone has a cell phone and voicemail these days; simple voice recording apps are generally included in the phone’s software or easily obtained for little or nothing. But so often, to reduce clutter and make space we discard those messages or 'meaningless' clips, not imagining it might be the last time. How precious and comforting to have something like that from all of them would be. How simple but valuable to our loved ones to arrange to leave them such a comforting memory.
I only post this in the hopes it might cause “the light to come on” for some folks and encourage them to do what I wish I could easily have done before it was no longer possible. Video clips and home movies . . . all the things we had time for that just got overlooked or passed over in the rush of life. My mom was self conscious and didn't like being in front of the camera so we tend to give them their space and respect that. But I could have found ways to do it without being morbid about it. We take pictures, but audio and video are valuable in their own right.
Again, would hate to think this post upsets anyone and, just maybe, does something to bring some comfort to some. None of us are promised another breath and we all travel that common road.
Qui Plantavit Curabit – Memento Mori
.
). Not making light of it, just admitting there are some folks and some circumstances where, like many other things it might not be applicable. When remembrance turns into obsession or refusing to let the pain go, that certainly isn't healthy.
