The Missed Call

It began with a voicemail I never called back.

That isn't where the beginning is, exactly but it's where I always return. A red notification bubble on my screen. One missed call. One voice message. Just a couple of seconds long.

And I ignored it.

I recall thinking, I'll call him later. I had work to do. I was angry. Exhausted. And if I'm being truthful, I didn't want to hear his voice—not after what we'd done.

But I never did.

He died the next morning.

Heart attack in his sleep. No warning. No last words. Just nothing. The kind that seeps into your chest and lingers.

I didn't cry initially. I didn't even hear the message. I couldn't. I just kept looking at my phone as if it had cheated on me. Or perhaps like I had cheated on him.

The guilt did not come in waves. It came like a flood, without mercy. Every nice thing I didn't say, every eye roll at his counsel, every dumb fight we never won—it all descended upon me at the same time.

They say that grief becomes softer with time. But guilt does not. Guilt hones.

It became a silent companion. I took it to bed. Took it to work. Heard it whisper when I laughed too loudly or dared to be okay. It haunted the vacant chairs and the songs he once hummed. It reminded me that I didn't deserve to move on.

Because how could I?

He had phoned me. Picked me. In the final moment of his life, he considered me. And I didn't even answer.

I'd replay the "what if" game each evening. What if I'd answered? Would he have realized he was loved? Would he have passed away knowing he counted? Would it have made a difference?

I didn't speak of it for a while. Not to family. Not to friends. I didn't want solace—I wanted punishment. I wanted to hurt. Like pain could erase the quiet. Could turn back the clock.

On a night, months after, I was by myself in my apartment, the air too quiet, the TV monologuing to no one. I checked the voicemail.

It lasted only seven seconds.

"Hi, just wanted to say I'm proud of you. Always have been. That's all."

I broke.

I don't know how long I wept, but it felt as if something in me fractured open. A dam that had kept everything back I refused to feel.

Proud of me?

I had wasted so much time resenting myself that I never allowed those words in. Never thought I earned them.

That's when I knew something. He already had forgiven me.

He had no notion he was going to die. That message wasn't his last act. It wasn't goodbye. It was love, plain and uncalculating. The kind I had refused to accept.

And I had a decision.

I could continue to punish me, nurture the guilt like some hurt creature—or I could learn to forgive myself, as he had.

Forgiveness, I've discovered, is not a light switch. It's a quiet, everyday decision. There are days when I still lose. Still spiral. Still hear the echo of my own blame. But I don't let it win anymore.

I began writing him letters. Not for him, necessarily, but for me. I write what I want to have said. What I want to have done. I explain my days to him, about the coffee place he adored that closed down, about how I finally landed that job he pushed me so hard to get.

I tell him I miss him.

And occasionally, I tell him I'm sorry.

But I don't make those words the last line anymore. I add: Thank you. And I love you. And I'm trying.

Because I am.

I began therapy. I talked to my sister. I stopped avoiding family gatherings. I stopped ghosting people I care about. I even began answering the phone when it rings, even if I'm exhausted or irritated or in the middle of something.

Because now I know sometimes, that call is the last.

But this is not a story about death. It's about forgiveness.

Not the kind we beg from others. The kind we offer to ourselves, when we least think we deserve it.

Letting go doesn't equal forgetting. It means recalling without pain being the singular emotion you experience. It means deciding to have faith that you are better than your greatest failure. That you're still important. That you can heal, even if the scar remains.

And if you're reading this, gripping something you've done or not done perhaps this is your cue to let go.

Not because it's easy.

But because you deserve peace.