She had a phone. I remember that much. But I lost her when I was still a child, too young to understand how the world could feel so empty, so silent.
That phone was there, always just out of reach. A lifeline I never got to grab.
I never called her.
She never called me.
I think about all the times I could have picked up that receiver, heard her voice, asked her about my day or just told her I loved her. But the truth is, I never had the chance. The chance slipped away with her, leaving me with a quiet line and a thousand unanswered questions.
Losing her so early meant I grew up without that simple connection the voice of a mother on the other end of a phone call. No bedtime chats, no “Are you okay?” calls, no “I miss you” whispered through the night. Just silence. An empty space where her voice should have been.
Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like to hear her laugh, to tell her the small things that made my day things I wished I could share with someone who loved me unconditionally. But those calls never came. The phone never rang. And the silence stretched on, thick and heavy, filling every room I was in.
That phone sits as a silent reminder of a love that couldn’t reach me, of moments that never happened, and of a childhood shaped by the echo of what was lost.
There are days when the weight of that silence feels unbearable, when the ache of not hearing her voice crashes over me like a wave I can’t escape. And yet, in that ache, there is also a quiet strength, the strength to keep going, to keep living a life she never got to see.
I’m learning that some calls remain forever impossible. That some voices, once gone, leave behind echoes that both haunt and heal.
Even though I can’t hear her voice now, I carry her with me in every silent space, in every quiet moment, and in every part of me that still longs to say, “I love you.” I carry the hope that maybe, through me, her story continues, even if the phone never rings.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.
