BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Save Your Voicemails

That's probably the best piece of advice I could ever give.  Save your voicemails.  Just trust me on this one.

Today, I went to the Verizon store to finalize canceling my mom's cell.  What happened was... I was keeping the line going just paying it every month.  I couldn't get into the voicemails because I didn't know her passcode.  I'd tried a few times over the last 6 months and nothing was right.  Of course the people in the store were like, "Oh we could have just reset the passcode."

Hindsight is 20/20.  Anyways, it's not too big of a deal.  Her voicemails were just mostly doctors calling with appointment confirmations and some of them were me calling just saying, hey call me back to let me know what's up.  There was one though on there that was a family friend who just passed on who was one of my mom's friends from California.  They are about the same age.  Just about 6 months apart from one another.  Her son and I grew up together.  I plan to make a trip out to Cali to say hello and hang out with him at some point.  I told him to come visit me here in PA for sure.

You could say he was my VERY first best friend.  We did all kinds of stuff together as little kids out in Cali.

Anyways, so, I initiated the port to Google Voice two nights ago.  Then after that I received an email it would take about 24 hours to port.  Fast forward to last night... After work on my way to yoga I tried one last password I hadn't tried yet.  It worked!  So, I listened to the voicemails at work.  She had saved about 40 of them.

I decided okay, I'm going to record these when I get home.  As soon as I get home I head upstairs and open my recording app... The voicemail couldn't connect.  I then saw an email pop up... The port was successful.  I basically missed it only by a short while.

Sigh.  Oh well.  I checked with the people at Verizon today and they said that the voicemails are unrecoverable.  So all that I remember is what there is.

It would have been nice to have the voicemail.  The only thing they could help me with today at the Verizon store after work was waiving the 70 dollar early termination fee.  Which is nice, but the voicemails were invaluable.  I don't know how their system is setup but I imagine they have to make backups in case of failure... So what's sad is that somewhere out there is a server room that contains a server farm where this data actually physically lived.  All data stored anywhere on any site that you go to or any hosted service has to live somewhere.  And there has to be information technology people that maintain it.  That's just how it works.

I live and breathe that every day.

So, somewhere out there, is a backup of this information.  Of these voicemails.  I just don't know the right people at Verizon to obtain authorized access to get the information.

It's fine.  They weren't super crazy important voicemails.  Just kind of would have been nice to have for nostalgic purposes.

My own voicemails though?  I use an iPhone App called Decipher VoiceMail to grab the voicemails in MP3 format.  Then I take those and just put raw MP3s in sorted folder by called and then tag them by date and time.

I started doing this somewhere back in 2009 or so.  I have all these voicemails from my mom.  And as well from lots of other people.  I also have voicemails from my mom's one friend Ed... He was kind of like one of the most influential people in my life.  Larger than life type of guy.  Everyone loved him.  So it's just nice to hear his voice from time to time as well.  My mom and him were best buds.  She was just completely depressed for months after he passed away.  He had a stroke at my sister's wedding...

It kind of eats me up.  So, in 2013...

I was chatting with you know, that girl... 0202... you know... the girl... The one that is on my mind all the time.  We'd started to talk again that spring.  So... There was texting and friending on social media and emails... things were good.  We were getting alone fine.

Then some stuff happened over that summer and... she cut me off again.  I was in a terrible mood.  I was just mean to everyone.  I didn't care about anything but to talk to her.  I was annoyed with myself for getting myself cut out of her life again.  It was horrible.  I was grouchy.  So, my sister was supposed to get married at the beach down in VA...

I was supposed to be in the same room as Ed... to share a room with him at the hotel.

But because I couldn't talk to that girl... I was sooo upset that I just told my sister I didn't want to go to the wedding.  I stayed home instead.

So... Ed had his own room.  He drove down with my mom and all them, just fine the night before the wedding.  Then in the early morning he started to have a stroke.  He made it out of his room after a while and knocked on my mom's door and her friend's door.  They called 911.  But it was too late.

I just can't help but wonder if I had BEEN there and he could have woken me up and I could have called 911 sooner.  Maybe he'd still be here today.  And maybe my mom would still be here today because she'd have her best buddy to keep her fighting a little longer to make it through.  But she just couldn't fight any longer when she was in the ICU after those 10 or so days.

I don't know.  It's all what ifs and should haves I guess.

Now none of those people are in my life.... 0202 girl... Ed... my mom...

Hmmm... But I have voicemails to remind me.  Except that girl, I have no voicemails from her.  In ALL the years we knew one another, the only voicemail that I ever got, was a butt call.

Yep.

I remember it to this day, she was out at Dave and Busters for 1 and 1 for this work outing.  They took a bus out and went as a group thing all together.  I remember seeing the voicemail pop up and getting excited to see what it is she had called about...

Butt call.

Just idle chatter for 2 minutes until it ended.  Yep.  Actually because of the way my archive software works, it just saves everything... I still have the butt call mp3.  Haha... Oh well.  There it is in her folder.  The only item when everyone else has tons of messages in their archive folders.

Well, anyways... I did hear her voice maybe a year and some change ago when she had me listen to this podcast she was on.  I listened to every word of it... You know... Some people just have voices that...

They are just so pleasing to listen to.  You could just listen to them talk ALLL day.  Other people are annoying as heck, but her voice... It's great.  I love it.

Well anyways... So, sometimes I listen to voicemails from my mom.  Most of the time I just have them because... Just to have them.  I actually started keeping them as a record because of all the trust court stuff going on.  So I'm glad that I kept them all.

So save your voicemails.  It's a nice reminder of someone when they are gone.  Just trust me.  Hearing my mom's voice from time to time is priceless.  And I made sure to make like a thousand backups of all the voicemails I have from her.  It's tough though, it does make me cry... But I'm glad I have them.