The Inheritance

The one thing my late husband didn't leave me when he died

My late husband died and those words went with him.

I don’t have a single recording of George saying I love you. Not a voice memo. Not a video. Nowhere in my phone, in this whole digital age, can I pull up his voice and hear it.

I have one voicemail from him.

December 16, 2022.

It’s ten seconds long. The only thing he says is hello... hello? Something wasn’t working in that moment. The line, the signal, something. He was reaching and not getting through.

That’s the one voicemail I have. Him, trying to connect, and the words never landing.

For some reason, I didn’t delete it at the time.

He died unexpectedly a few months later.

Those seemingly meaningless words became entombed in my phone.

I’m writing this with tears. I’ll be honest about that.

I remarried.

If you scroll through my voicemail inbox right now, there are thirty-six of them from my husband Dave. I counted.

They’re short. He’s on his way home, or out running an errand. They almost always start the same way.

Hey, babe.

And they almost always end the same way too.

I love you.

I am completely unwilling to delete a single one.

And I hear those words at home, too. On any given day.

Then there’s one from Elise. My daughter. 2015. She would have been ten.

Hi mommy I love you so much love you bye.

She left it without thinking. The way a child does. The exact words, all of them, in one breath, and then gone — love you bye — already on to the next thing.

And then, ironically, one more. From my late best friend Todd.

He passed away suddenly one year after George.

He called late at night. A few pops under his belt, as he would say. Which usually looked like straight vodka on ice.

God love him.

The voicemail is terse. He was mad at me. Inappropriate, frankly. And I still keep it.

It makes me laugh now. We had that kind of relationship. George used to say we were like brother and sister.

So I keep them all. A ten-year-old saying I love you so much without being asked. Dave, thirty-six times. Todd, mad at me at midnight. George, reaching through a bad connection and never quite getting there.

The words… from a child. From my husband. From others.

Everyone except from him. I’d do anything to hear him say them. But I can’t.

He lost his words before he lost his life.

A spontaneous rupture arrived and scrambled everything. Three weeks of word salad that carried no meaning. The brain bleed took that from him. It took it from me.

And it rips me to shreds that I don’t recall the last time he said it. Not because he didn’t. Because he did so often it became the background. The casual departure.

I do have him, though. Not his voice saying the words, but him.

There are videos. Funny ones I can replay. One where he’s at the piano. He loved to play. I’m so blessed I can still hear his music whenever I want.

But to hear him say I love you and be able to play that. That’s the one. That’s the wish.

I can’t clip it together from fragments of what I do have. No AI in the world can generate the true sentiment. Nothing satisfies what only lives as a memory now. A sketchy one at best.

We planned for everything else. He was a lawyer by trade, after all. His affairs were in order. We just didn’t plan for the unexpected. And when it came, what I lost wasn’t on any list. His words. His ability to say I love you. The one inheritance that would keep part of us, part of him alive.

No one tells you to save the voice. Not a lawyer. Not an estate attorney. I wish they had.

I can’t go back for it. But I can keep it from happening again.

I’m in Washington, DC, right now. With Elise. I leave tomorrow.

I won’t see her again for more than a month.

That’s the hard part.

And then I’m getting on a plane to somewhere remote. I don’t know if I’ll have a good connection where I’m going.

I promise you, when I leave for that trip, I know exactly what I’m taking with me.

But before I go, I’m capturing her voice. Her telling me she loves me. And I’m leaving her mine. So she never has to wonder what I sounded like saying it.

If you’ve lost someone, you already know. You don’t need me to explain it.

And if you’re lucky enough to still hear those voices every day — then this is the only thing I’ll ask.

Save one. The voice. The words. The ordinary hey babe that’s so familiar you stopped hearing it.

Not because you’re afraid of losing it.

Because it’s worth keeping.

Capture them telling you. Let them capture you telling them.

Don’t wait. Do it before the next ordinary goodbye you won’t remember.

Hello... hello?

That’s what I have.

So I’m going to go get more.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. Each week, I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them. Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing.

Two pieces a week. Tuesday and Sunday.

Follow along.

Whose voice would you give anything to hear again—or which one are you going to capture before you can't? I would love to read about it.