A Message from Ali
This week, I was reminded that something seemingly “material” can be so meaningful when there are memories associated with it. On Wednesday, we learned that our home phone’s answering machine broke. Who cares, right? So wrong… For the last 10 years, if you called our house and we couldn’t answer the phone, you’d hear Andrew’s voice. Andrew was the answering machine greeting saying, “Hey, you’ve reached the McDonoughs…” All of a sudden, that was gone. Andrew’s voice disappeared from the answering machine on Wednesday and each of our hearts sunk. I think we tried to hide it from each other, but all three of us knew the devastation this was causing each of us.
The timing didn’t help our pain either, as it happened so close to the “anniversary” of the day Andrew was taken from us.
Not having Andrew’s voice on the answering machine would be just another reminder to us that he’s gone. He can’t just re-record the greeting, so we tore the house apart looking for a special CD. Each of us have a CD of “Andrew’s Audio”. It’s his voice at different stages of his life, from different types of recordings. A Christmas greeting he recorded when he was 7. His cell phone answering machine greeting. The answering machine greeting he recorded for our house phone. And recordings from his conversations while in the hospital. Whenever the CD was made, something got lost in translation and his voice was changed a little bit, so I spent a few hours exploring the internet trying to figure out what changing “pitch”, “gate” and so many other audio recording words I’ve never heard of would do.
As I spent time doing that, my dad quietly went outside. He sat out back, surely talking to Andrew like he often does. I could feel his fear that we had just lost another piece of Andrew. I could feel his heavy heart. I could feel his pain. Because my mom and I were feeling it too.
For nearly two hours, I listened to Track 6 through Track 13 of the CD – recordings from our time in the hospital. Prior to listening, I didn’t even know that those recordings were on the CD, but I felt like I couldn’t stop listening. I was hearing my brother’s voice for the first time in SO long. I closed my eyes and could see him. Tears poured down my face and my heart was shattering all over again, but I couldn’t stop listening. At some point during our 167 days in the hospital, my aunt gave us a recorder. Listening to the recordings, I felt so many emotions. I felt like I got punched in the stomach, like I could throw up, as the memories of the worst days in the hospital and the brutal reality of him being gone flooded my mind. At times, I laughed through tears at Andrew’s humor that was evident through the 20-40 medications he was on. At other times, I could hear pain and sadness through his voice and it killed me beyond words. I felt immense guilt, hearing him asking for me while I was at school and not with him. The days I had to go to school, I would rush back to the hospital right after dismissal, sleep over in a fold out chair beside his bed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and then leave the next morning for school, but I would give anything to go back in time and skip school to be at the hospital all day, every day with him. For the first time in years, I heard my brother say, “I love you” to me. His own voice. I felt pride, simply hearing his voice and knowing that that voice and those words were coming from my brother.
Later that night, I played a few versions of Andrew’s recording that I edited. One sounded pretty close to Andrew’s voice, but not quite there. It was close though and it felt like a sense of relief and maybe a little hope came over my dad. That’s when he told me something so special…
As he sat outside, looking to the sky and talking to Andrew, a shooting star shot across the pitch-black sky right above him. To make it more special, it was the first shooting star my dad has ever seen and it was at a time that he really needed a sign from Andrew.
In desperation, we reached out to a loyal B+ supporter to see if she can fix the answering machine recording and we’ll play it to record as our answering machine greeting again.
To me, my brother was trying to send a message to his dad saying that answering machine or not, he’ll always be with us.