What's Worth $1000?

Is my dead Dad’s phone worth $1000? It’s not a question I ever expected to ask myself, but circumstances have brought me to it. The phone I was trading in to Verizon was stolen from my car, and the only way to get the promotional credit of $1000 is to provide them with some other phone. They have to receive something, anything, in order to give me the credit. And this is the phone I have. 

For the last few months, my Dad’s phone was already lost. Convinced I’d put it back in the box where I keep all of his papers and all of my progress on managing his estate, I was surprised to find it missing. I looked again and again, looked in my backpack and in my desk, looked all over the house and it just wasn’t there. Ok, I told myself. No big deal. I don’t need the phone. I’ve already taken all the information I needed from it and the cell service is turned off anyway. I can live without it. But two weeks ago when I found it wedged in the gap between my desk and the printer, relief flooded over me. I was so glad to have it back even if I couldn’t get it to turn on.

There’s something about being able to hold something that he held so often - some sort of comfort or connection, some wonder and mystery, too. There are whole parts of his life I know nothing about. I’m sure of that, and I wonder if there are clues in that phone for me to find. I wonder what he said into it, and to whom. What did he talk with his friends about? What music did he put on to comfort himself? Who did he call first when he was feeling lonely or sad? What made him laugh that he didn’t share with me? What did he think about me and my life and what I’ve made of it, really? Did he see himself in me, and did he like what he saw? I know some of this, but I’ve always believed there was more. More that didn’t get said, more that he didn’t know to say,  and I miss the possibility of hearing it all. 

I’ll admit that I’ve gone back through some of his email and his text messages (who wouldn’t?), looking for traces of him. I like seeing the alerts that show up from the BBC and the scrolls of emails from his church and local music venues, from the Visionary Art Museum and the Rotary. These were his people and these were his places. His empty chair at church, the one with arms they moved into the sanctuary just for him so he could stand and sit on his own for the hymns, just the way he liked it. The messages remind me of the web of connection and care that held him, of the people and places that held his life. Of what he gave to them, too. 

I look at his phone and remember our arguments. How many times did I tell him to replace his phone? It was SO old. It didn’t hold a charge well anymore and it was always running out of power at the worst times. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t let it go. Didn’t understand how he’d refuse to spend money when he had plenty of it for something like this. Didn’t have much sympathy for the fact that he’d have to learn something new if he traded it in. Didn’t even pause to think it might be hard to let go of an object that has been so close to you, a conduit of connection and a lifeline to the outside world in some of the worst moments of aloneness. It was this phone - always on speakerphone no matter the situation, dear god - that entertained him in the hospital and through treatment, this phone that allowed him to set up rides from his friends, arrange for dinner dates and concerts, and finally this phone that allowed him to hear his brother’s voice from across the miles as he moved into hospice and heed his friends’ encouragement to let go when there was nothing more to do.

This was the phone he talked to me on, too, always picking it up when I called no matter where he was or what he was in the middle of. In the line at the grocery store? Sitting at the table during an intimate dinner party? Outside at a raucous lakeside concert? He’d always pick up. It used to frustrate me so much when I’d hear the sounds on the other end of the line. Don’t pick up the phone if you know you can’t talk, I’d think to myself as whatever awkward situation unfolded around him with me on speakerphone. I’d give anything for him to pick up now. To hear his voice. To have him call me love like he always did. To tell me we should take care of each other, my little family so far away. He’d always pick up that phone. 

He’d say this is a no-brainer, I’m sure. Take the $1000. Ever the practical one, and also ever the one who lived with the fear of poverty so deep in him he worried one day he’d be forced to live under a bridge - no matter what he had in savings or how many people loved him - he’d tell me to take the money. He’d tell me to let the phone go, but I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready to let go of this conduit of connection, this lifeline for him, this one thing I can always pick up now even when he is gone.