The Last Voice Message

It had been 219 days since he died, but Eliza still played his voice message every night before she went to sleep.

It wasn’t even anything extraordinary. Just a thirty-second message from a man running late. “Hey love, I’m stuck in traffic, but I’ll be home soon. Save me some of that pasta, alright? Love you.”

Thirty seconds. That was it. But to Eliza, it was everything.

Reid had always been unpredictable — not in the careless kind of way, but in the adventurous sense. Spontaneous road trips, midnight ice cream runs, handwritten notes in her coat pocket. He lived loudly, loved freely, and never left a moment unspoken.

Until that one day… when he left forever.

It was an ordinary Tuesday. They had argued the night before about something silly — maybe the laundry, maybe his new job offer in another city. Eliza didn’t even remember the reason, only the feeling: frustration, distance, a cold goodnight.

And then the next morning, he left that voicemail.

She didn’t pick up when he called. She let it go to voicemail — partly out of stubbornness, partly because she was running late herself. She remembered standing in the kitchen, phone buzzing, her thumb hovering over the screen before she muttered, "I'll call him later."

He never made it home.

A speeding truck ran a red light. The crash was instant. The doctors said he didn’t suffer. But Eliza did — every moment since.

She clung to that voicemail like a lifeline. The last trace of his voice, full of warmth, unaware of fate’s cruelty. Every night, after brushing her teeth and turning off the lights, she’d press play.

“Hey love… I’m stuck in traffic…”

It hurt. But not listening hurt more.

Friends told her to delete it. "You need to move on," they said.
Her mother offered to back it up and store it away.
Her therapist suggested writing letters to Reid instead of replaying his words.

But none of them understood. That thirty-second clip was the closest thing to time travel she had. For half a minute, he was alive. He was coming home. He was still hers.

Months passed. Seasons changed. The grief grew quieter but heavier, like fog.

Then, one Sunday, while cleaning her phone’s storage, a system warning popped up: “Storage full. Consider deleting large audio files.”

She froze. Her heart raced. No — not the voicemail.

She immediately transferred the file to her computer, her cloud drive, her USB stick. She even sent a copy to her own email. She couldn’t risk losing it.

But that night, as she lay in bed, something shifted.

She looked at the phone in her hand, thumb hovering over the play button like so many nights before… but didn’t press it.

She stared at the ceiling, letting the silence settle. And in that silence, she realized something:
She didn’t need to press play to hear him anymore.
His voice had already rooted itself inside her — not in a file, but in her.

She smiled.

The voicemail wasn’t just a goodbye.
It was a reminder that love, real love, leaves echoes — in the heart, in the spaces between grief, in the silence.

Eliza didn’t delete the message. She never would.
But that night, for the first time in 219 days, she fell asleep without playing it.
And in her dreams, he wasn’t gone.
He was running late.
But he was coming home.

love, loss, emotional, voicemail, heartbreak, memories, second chances, grief