P;ease Leave a Message at the Tone

For Christmas, I gave a close friend on the East Coast a landline phone to replace one that was no longer working well for her. She wanted the exact same brand and model as her old one, but it had been out of production a few years, so I went on to eBay and found one that the seller described as being used but in excellent condition. And so it was.

The phone, which came to me first before I Christmas-wrapped it and sent it off to my friend, was so well-packaged and in such good shape that it didn’t occur to me to check for old messages on its digital recorder and erase them. Being naturally curious, though, my friend, after receiving the phone, decided to listen to them.

There were only 15 messages on the recorder. The first was from a doctor reporting back to the phone’s previous owner, whom I’ll call John, with an update on the condition of his hospitalized wife. The doc had what he called good news, but left a lot of information about test results.

The news wasn’t all that good, it appears, as the next few messages were those of condolence to John from family and friends for the loss of his wife. John’s grief seems to have been deep, as one of his relatives suggested in a later message that he seek bereavement counseling. There was a subsequent message on the phone’s recorder from the counselor.

There was not much after that, except for a couple around the time of John’s birthday or a holiday which suggested that he was having an argument with a family member about something. But the final message was from John’s niece, congratulating him on beginning to date again. This one came in about a year after the first one on the phone. The niece felt that John’s grief had lasted long enough, and she was happy he was back out there in the world.

Questions, of course,  remain. Was John the phone’s seller? An eBay handle was used instead of a name, ad while I might be able find out, I’m not inclined to do that. Were these the only messages John received in a year? They were in perfect logical order, as if some editing had taken place. And finally, how did his dating work out? Did he marry again? Sounds like the beginning of a short story, or a novel, or a screenplay. Have we seen this movie before?

My friend, by the way, seems to understand what happened here. She has put her old phone away, but hasn’t erased the messages on its recorder, which still works, because some of the voices are from people no longer with us, as she put it. Something tells me she is not alone.