I think anyone who has lost a loved one in the cell phone age has had those twenty-first century grief moments – hearing a voicemail you horde, calling the phone just to hear their outgoing message. I cried when the last voicemail I had from my mom disappeared into the digital ether. I still have her at the top spot in my favorites. It’s been eleven years and I’m sure if I accidentally pressed it I’d get someone very confused. But I can’t bring myself to remove her…

I dried the rinsed the casserole dish and handed it to my sister, Cindy, to dry. As she worked she stared out towards her living room where her husband, Alex, and their son, Joe, watched Sunday Night Football. Well, Alex watched, while Joe chewed on his over-sized pastel plastic keys. A contented look on her face, I don’t think Cindy was aware she had started humming.

“Are you trying to make me cry?” I asked.

“What?” she said, startled. “Oh, Mira, sorry. I didn’t even realize…”

I smiled, “It’s okay. Just missing Dad a lot and I can’t hear that song without thinking of him…”

Cindy smiled back and then started quietly singing, “Spinning on that dizzy edge…”

“Cin, really?”

“…Kissed her face and kissed her head…”

“We’re doing this?”

“…Dreamed of all the different ways…”

I knew she wasn’t going to stop, so I quietly joined her, “I had to make her glow/ ‘Why are you so far away?’ she said/ ‘Why won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you/ That I’m in love with you?’”

It was about then that the tears started. I kept washing dishes and Cindy kept drying. As the tears rolled down my cheeks we reached the chorus together, “…Yooouuu/ Strange as angels/ Dancing in the deepest oceans/ Twisting in the water/ you’re just like a dream.”

“Oh, Mira…” Cindy noticed my tears and set down the plate she way drying and wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” I said sniffling.

“It’s okay, Mira…”

I quietly let my big sister hold me for a long moment. “I called him the other day,” then added quickly, “Accidentally. He’s still in my ‘Favorites’. I can’t take him out of my ‘Favorites.’”

Cindy laughed and sniffled – her tears joined mine at some point. “Yeah, I can’t bring myself to remove him either.”

“It was good to hear his voice on his outgoing message…”

“You know I have to deactivate that line, right?”

I nodded. “I know. I thought you had. You closed out the estate, what? Six months ago?”

“Yeah…” she said, trailing off. “That was just one thing I hadn’t done. Felt too… final.”

I laughed. “Weird the arbitrary places we draw that line.”

“Right?”

A few nights later, I found myself home alone. I realized I had just spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling TikTok and I absently closed the app. I pulled up the phone app and went to my favorites to call Cindy and saw “Dad” there, and the grief washed over me, unbidden. It didn’t jar loose a torrent of tears this time, but it was a close thing. Before I realized I was doing it, I touched his entry.

“The number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”

She’d done it. She’d finally done it. I felt a mix of fresh grief, like I lost another part of him, and… a little relief. Like I’d finally let go of something… stupidly I wondered if he felt that way when he let go of me on my pink Huffy after he removed the training wheels… And that brought me back to Dad tucking me in and humming “Just Like Heaven” until I fell asleep…

I shook my head, wiped my eyes – I’m not crying, you are! – and called Cindy. When she picked up I started, “I’m such a fucking basket case…”

“Oh, Mira…”

A few nights later, it actually was an accident. I aimed for Cindy’s entry but inadvertently hit “Dad”. Bracing for the “The number you have reached…” message, I quickly moved to press disconnect, but the line picked up and there wasn’t an automated message but dead air. I waited for someone to say, “Hello?” expecting the line to have already been reassigned, but the line remained quiet. I listened and I swear I heard a faint humming. Not like an electronic hum, like 60 cycle hum or something like that. No, it was like a person humming, but it was so faint… Click, and the line went dead. I let out a long breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

After that I found myself with my finger hovering deliberately over the “Dad” entry. I assured myself the sound I heard was just some switching anomaly, nothing more. What else could it realistically be?

“I finally did it,” Cindy said as she dried the saucier and hung it from the potholder.

“Did what?”

“Took Dad out of my favorites. I figured after I disconnected his line I was just torturing myself.”

“Because your little sister stupidly called the disconnected line?”

“Mira, stop. I’m not telling you to do it – you have to do what feels right for you.”

I quietly washed dishes and Cindy dried. Finally, I shook my head, “I’m not ready.”

“That’s fine, Mira. That’s fine…”

Later that week, the weather turned cold and the first big storm of the season blew in from the Pacific, rattling the windows. The power flickered. I turned the TV off and pulled the blanket close around me as I listened to the wind gust through the eaves outside as it peppered the windows with horizontal rain. A flash lit up the clouds out over the bay. I started counting, “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four-Mississippi, five-Miss—” A peal of thunder rolled through the house and I remembered dad teaching me that when I was scared of the thunder and lightning. It didn’t help – I still ran for their bedroom the first big peal of thunder after he’d left – but laying there under the blanket, knowing the storm was moving through…

I picked up my phone and pressed the button for “Dad.”

The line picked up. Dead air again. Then I heard it again, unmistakable – humming. “Just Like Heaven.” I closed my eyes against tears and listened as the humming went through a verse and chorus and then broke off as the voice cleared its throat. I knew that cough like I knew my own hand. “Daddy?” I said reflexively.

The line cut off. I stared at the screen glowing in the darkness, blurry through my tears.

I called again.

“The number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service…”

I dropped the phone and just let the tears come.

A blurry flash of lightning outside. Through my tears I counted, “One-Mississippi, Two—” Thunder, loud and immediate, shook the house.

The phone started ringing. The ringtone was the Watson Twins’ cover of “Just Like Heaven,” so I didn’t need to see the caller ID that read just “Dad.”

“…You/ Soft and lonely/ You/ Lost and lonely/ You/ Just like… heaven…” And before I could break free of my shock, the song abruptly cut off. I frantically looked at the screen, but it was just my home screen. I opened the phone app, touched the “Favorites.”

The top contact was Cindy.

Dad was gone.