Today, after my daughter’s funeral, and several hours of tearful soul-searching, I started going through my phone and deleting two weeks’ worth of condolence messages.
There were so many of them that I eventually selected ‘delete all,’ but one message didn’t delete.
fuck
It was one of the last messages my daughter left me before she died, and it was still marked as ‘new.’ Sometimes my voicemail forces me to listen to old messages before I can delete them, so played it, even though I really didn’t want to at that moment.
My daughter said, “Hey dad, I just wanted to let you know I’m okay and I’m home now.”
