Answering machine messages and voicemail. The last connection to a loved one

My dad’s voice still answers the phone at my mom’s house. He died several years. It’s a wonderful reminder of what he sounded like.

I guess most people save a few voice messages to remember a loved one?

It’s comforting to hear a familiar voice. An option most of us didn’t have until the past decade or so.

I need to record dad’s answering machine greeting message and save it permanently.

Hm. I had exactly the opposite experience. For years after her death, my Dad’s cellphone still had my Mom’s recording voicemail greeting. Since I rarely called him on his cell, every few years I’d hear her voice unexpectedly and have to sit down for a minute. Much better to just watch home videos and such.

Same here. I was at my grandmothers house showering and changing clothes the day after my dad died. I was the only one there and her phone rang, I figured not my house so not my place to answer. I had forgotten that he had recorded her answering machine message and nearly passed out when the recording started.

It would be unsettling to hear someone’s voice after a recent death.

It’s easier now after a few years. I start to forget what dad sounded like. The answering machine greeting is a nice reminder. I only hear it a few times a year.

I still have an answering machine with my dad’s voice. He passed away in 2003. It’s not hooked up anymore. I don’t have a landline. But I still like to play his greeting every once in a while to remember what he sounded like. It doesn’t make me feel sad at all.

I don’t have a voice mail from her but my Mom is still in my Phone’s contact list. I can’t delete it and she is gone for many years now.

Several months after my mom passed, I finally got around to throwing out her answering machine, first playing her outgoing message. One of my cats had slept with her every night, and the two of them had really bonded. When I played her message, the cat came and stared intently at the machine from every angle, as if to say “I know you’re in there.”

If you have used the Google Voice-activated search in your phone or tablet these recordings are saved where only the logged in used can hear them until they are deleted. I learned this last week and have been tempted to tell my friend whose first husband passed away at age 35 two years ago; ‘If you didn’t already know, you can log into Casey’s Gmail and listen to his voice searching for things.’ I know she saved his voicemails from her phone so she may be interested in this. But she’s moved on to an extent, remarried a widower and they have a child on the way.
Let sleeping dogs lie, do you think?

Actually, I have found Facebook the most painful reminder. I still have a passed friend on my friend list. I see her face. I see her last message to me on chat. I could delete it, but I can’t. :frowning:

My stepfather uses my mother’s iPhone since she died. It still has her voice on the answering machine. I wish I could call it and hear her voice, but that would mean talking to the man. We have absolutely nothing to say to each other. If I’m lucky very soon we won’t have to talk to each other ever again except about my son, who he treats well. I won’t stop him from seeing his grandson unless he treats him like he treats me.

But again, I wish I could hear my mother’s voice again, if only a recording.

Our voice mail has our son’s voice on it - from when he was about ten. Seeing as he is now twenty-three, and a baritone, it is a bit of a kick to hear this kid’s voice.

My father died in January of 1989. In December of 1988 shortly before Christmas, he called a relative in Latvia (still behind the iron curtain then) on a speakerphone he’d borrowed from work and recorded the entire conversation so he could replay it for our relatives here when they came over for Christmas.

I’d had that cassette for 27 years and had never played it. I didn’t even know if it was still functional. For some reason last Christmas, I decided it was time. It was so emotional and bittersweet. It was sad but I was crying from happiness, too, because it brought him closer to me again. I have tears in my eyes now as I’m typing this. It was so good to hear his voice again.

I don’t know when or if I’ll play it again but that cassette is priceless to me.

I have 1:44 of combined voicemails from my father who died last month. Hearing them is sad and sweet and funny and though I cried both times, I’ve listened to them twice. I’m so glad I kept them.

I too have a mini cassette with my late Mom’s (d. 2000) last message on it. It says, “Call your Mother”. I have not played it for anyone.

Eh, YMMV. For me, unexpectedly hearing my mother’s voice, even 8-9 years after her death, was not a pleasant experience. We have plenty of videos of her with the grandkids, so it wasn’t like that voicemail greeting was the only way we had left to hear her voice.
Every time I told him about it, he said he didn’t even know it was her voice on the greeting. My sister finally replaced it a few years ago.

I saved my dad’s messages to my Google docs. Well, no. I saved all incoming messages from “Mom and Dad” because I couldn’t bear to listen to find out which were him. I mean they all said the same thing, “Zsofia! This is your father. It’s… 10:30 on Tuesday morning, give me a call.” (All of these, as you see, are pieces of information already contained in the fact that he called my cell phone. So a lot of them were even still unread.)

After my mom died (7 months ago) I was the one who took care of closing all of her accounts, etc. When I called Verizon about her cell phone, the CSR told me about a service that could archive her outgoing voicemail message for a small fee. I wasn’t interested (and knew my brother wouldn’t be), and so far I don’t regret that decision.

I do have a few recordings of her singing, though: in 2009 I got her to record herself singing the lullabies she used to sing for my brother and me. They were recorded on microcassette, and eventually I converted them to MP3s. After she died, I made CDs for my brother and father in case they ever want to hear her voice. I wasn’t able to listen to them, myself, until a couple of weeks ago. I cried pretty hard, but I’m glad I have them and I know I’ll listen to them many times in the years to come.

I wish I had video of her. :frowning:
(I definitely still have all of the texts and emails she ever sent me, she’s still in my contacts list, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete her Google account yet.)

I never even thought about that, but I have a collection of old phones I’ve saved with text messages from a deceased relative. I wonder if that will be a new thing or if maybe I’m just the weird one.

I heard a story on NPR about this once, people who saved voice mails, answer machine messages, etc from dead relatives.

One of them got played on the radio, it was a grandmother calling her grandkid and singing a birthday song to him. I can see why people would keep those.

I know a trans man who’s voice mail message is from before he transitioned. He’s not exactly a baritone today, but the difference is still pretty striking.