The Voicemail

I bought a new phone last week and when I arrived home to upload the backed up version to the new phone and then erase the data on the old phone, I remembered there was a voicemail from my mom that I wanted to save. I played it on speaker and recorded it to a voice memo on the new phone. 

The message was the only one I had from my mom. Since she lived with me she didn't usually call me unless she was away. It was a week before she died and she had arrived at my sister's the day before. She was telling me that she was taking life easy that day, that my sister was taking one of her dogs to the vet. She also gave a weather report: that and knowing what I was eating for dinner were the two things I always could count on her to ask.

But as I scrolled through the voicemails, I also saw several from my neighbor who died a few months after her. I started to play them, each a chapter in the story about my front lawn.

"Hi Michelle, it's Basil. Do you want me to cut your lawn?"

For the record, I hate to mow and refuse to do it. But I have an amoeba of grass in my front yard and, well, someone had to cut it because it wasn't going to be me. This was something Basil always did for me when my former husband was out of town. 

It was different this time; he was clearly worn out, not like in the past when he would go home and set off to play basketball at the tennis club down the street. After he died, I could look back and see the clear signs that his body was failing although he didn't want to admit it.

The second message was about fertilizing the lawn. My fiancé (who was then "just" my boyfriend) was going to do that and Basil offered a spreader that he forgot he had.

And in the final message– the one I ended up keeping– he asked me how I liked my front yard and that he expected it to "pop" in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Basil had high expectations for the greening of lawns.

I don't know that I will ever listen to the saved messages from my mom or Basil but it's nice to know they are there because sometimes I miss those calls.