I used mine most extensively when we were at the hospital and then at Bailey-Boushay. In fact, I had to retrain everyone after she died to go back to using the landlines to reach me because for about five weeks, the cell phone was the best way to get to me. I even started texting people because I could do it without waking Sandy. At one point at Bailey-Boushay, she asked me what a sound was, and I replied it was just the phone telling me I'd received a text. Her eyes got wide and she looked at me accusingly. "When did you start texting?" I wasn't completely sure whether she thought I'd betrayed our anti-texting bond or if she was just astonished, the way I was the day she came home in 2004 and told me she'd accidentally started jogging and discovered she liked it.
Anyway, I burned through the prepaid time on my phone, but when Sandy died, there was still a chunk of time on hers. I decided to take her phone with me on bike rides so that I could use up some of the money on it.
At one point, I had a visitation dream in which she and I were talking about how she was going to return. She seemed to think she had it figured out; it had something to do with voicemail. In the dream, I told her I didn't think it worked that way. A few days later, I dialed into the voicemail on my cell phone to see if anyone had tried to reach me at that number instead of the landline. One of the messages was a pocket-dial, a really annoying one. Then I realized I was hearing my own voice. It was clear that I'd pocket-dialed my cell phone from Sandy's, but I couldn't figure out at first when it had happened. So I opted to listen to the envelope information about the call—and I heard Sandy's voice saying her name. I hadn't remembered that she'd recorded her name on the cell phone greeting (and she didn't record a full greeting, just her name). She didn't come back in the way that I wanted her to, but I was thrilled that some small piece of her was still here.
As the cellphone prepaid minutes came close to expiring each time, I refilled the phone. I kept thinking I'd call AT&T and ask for the digital recording, but I didn't have the energy. And besides, there was all that money on the phone to use up. So friends got used to me using Sandy's cellphone on bike rides and for occasional texts. (They didn't necessarily change the way the phone number was identified; one friend said she's enjoyed receiving texts that appear to be from Sandy.)
Last month, I accidentally let the account expire. I missed it by one day, losing about $150 worth of time that had accumulated as I'd refilled it repeatedly. But I didn't care about the money; I was desperate to get the recording of her voice.
I called AT&T and the people I talked to at first told me that I couldn't get the recording because the account was a gophone account. Eventually they acknowledged that they had no idea how to do it, but would if they could. They suggested I call a couple of other departments that were equally clueless. The best anyone could suggest was that I call the cellphone number, play the greeting on speakerphone, and record it with whatever device I could find. Meanwhile, they assured me the greeting still existed, even though I couldn't hear it when there was no money on the account.
I put $10 on the account to buy myself a month's worth of time, and was reassured when I called the number and heard her voice again. I tried the speakerphone recording route, but wasn't impressed with the results. I thought about asking friends to call from their smartphones with various recording apps, but first I searched the Internet.
I don't know why it's so hard for AT&T to provide the digital file. Or for any phone company. They have it, clearly, and I would happily have paid $25 or more for the file. The question must come up occasionally, because I quickly discovered online that my request is not that unusual.
Happily, I also learned about a service called SavemyVM.com. You give them the information about the phone number and the messages you want to save, and they use high-quality equipment to capture the recording. They promise to get it to you in a day or two; I had Sandy's greeting an hour after I submitted the form, on a Sunday, no less. And I was happy with the quality.
 |
| She's still here, in some important ways. |
Her cell phone account once again has no money on it. The AT&T folks were kind enough to preserve the account with her voicemail greeting for up to a year, so that I could add more money to it at any time in the next year and her voice would come forth again. But I have the digital copy I need now. I'm retiring her phone and returning to my own.
I feel a weird sense of loss about it. On one hand, the feeling of loss makes sense because I'm giving up one more thing that was hers. What makes it weird is that she didn't care for cell phones, and the one she ended up with was a particularly annoying model that replaced her original phone when she lost it. She'd feel no melancholy about letting this one go. Still, she carried this phone with her as she bussed to appointments the last year of her life, and occasionally, she'd call me from it with a question or just because she missed me. A few times she called as she walked home from a bus stop, bored and looking for distraction. I'd chat with her, hearing her exchange pleasantries with people and dogs, listening to her commentary on the landmarks she passed until she got to the front door, and then I'd be there waiting for her, ready to embrace her when we ended the call.
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