Will add to this: Backup your voicemails to a secondary or even tertiary location. Voicemails on mobile devices are saved by default to cloud storage. When my wife & I changed carriers from Verizon to Cricket we hadn't saved her voicemails, and Verizon deleted those voicemails immediately after we changed providers, so my wife lost her voicemails, including ones from several close relatives who had passed.

After my mother died suddenly, months later I found an voicemail telling me she’d gone home, and “if you need me, I’ll be home.” I saved it everywhere I could. I can hear it in my head whenever I miss her. One day I’ll meet her at home.

Can confirm. I have recordings of my father who passed in August that I'll likely forever cherish.

Wound is still fresh on this one but I'm thankful to have messages from him saying hi before he went downhill.

My heart goes out to you stranger. Ive been there with both parents. I still have a voice mail of my mom wishing me a happy birthday while she was sick. Nothing lasts forever but its been nice to hear her voice. I don’t play it that often because its not easy to listen without emotions welling up.

I feel this. I deleted a voicemail from my dad a long, long time ago. After he died I tried to literally even just call his number to hear his voicemail greeting- his asshole brother picked up the phone instead.

Don’t delete voicemails

LPT: Send all your loved ones to voicemail.

I have one voicemail from my wife saved and backed up. It's from a week before she died in 2013. I still cry when I listen to it. It makes me sad not having that voice in my life for the last 10 years.

It's just a routine voicemail too, nothing special. She asked me to pick up her meds from the pharmacy and that she'll meet me at her mom's house later that night.

I'd give almost anything just to talk to her and hear her voice again for just 5 minutes.

I lost my father in 2021 and for the longest time I believed I will forget what he used to sound like and one day my sister finds a clip of him trying his luck at recording a podcast and it felt unreal. It felt strange and deeply painful. Please make as many videos as you can, but most importantly please tell them that you love them.

I lost my father to a sudden death and I have still not recovered. Sending loads of love to you and your mom :)

can’t recommend this enough, having been in a similar situation as OP — you never know when you’ll lose your phone, have to change a phone number or get a new sim card.

For years I held on to my dads last text to me. And his last voicemail. Then I had to switch phones once and everything backed up except texts and voicemails. All gone. Bums me out when I think about it. After he died, I found some old vhs tapes that I think contain home videos. I haven’t been able to watch them yet. Mom died 10 years before and I haven’t heard her voice since. I may be ready to see the videos one day, but not yet.

Could you please tell me how?
They can only be saved in my "inbox" for so many days before they just get deleted :( Is there an easier way than just like.. recording and hitting play on it?

Man I wish I had thought to do an interview with my dad about his life before he passed. I’d cherish it so deeply. The real tip is in the comments, conduct an in in depth interview with your elderly / /dying loved ones about their lives

My dad died 4 years ago. After he passed, I found several voicemails from him that I’d just forgotten to delete - corny jokes, birthday wishes, just because messages. Now I’m so grateful that I have them.

I am so sorry for what you are going through

Damn bro. Reading this made me so sad. You poor soul, i hope youre doing okay

I still have a couple dead people on my fb messenger.

This is an excellent tip. I have a voicemail or two saved from my mom, who thankfully is still here and in general good health.

I wish I had one from a few different people, but alas, I do not.

Also, OP, I'm sorry for what you're going through right now. (Internet hugs)

Better yet, record them external from a phone system. Make copies, online and local.

The phone company PROBABLY isn't going to lose them, but you can't get any more.

I would have done this if I knew one day my mom wouldn't be able to talk for 3 years before she died. She had some funny ones too. But she was a letter writer so have lots of letters written to credit card companies and the news paper editor.

This is excellent advice. My mom passed a few years ago and I have a saved voicemail of her singing me happy birthday from before she was sick. I listen to it every year and always plan to. I turn 48 in a few weeks.

I also have them saved from my sister, aunt, and a couple of close friends. They don't know, mainly because it's weirdly morbid, but also because it's just for me.

You'd think posts like this would hurt less when my wife has been a hospice nurse for the last decade, but it doesn't, not when losing my parents is one of the few things that truly worries me. I hope you make it through this with as little anguish and as few long-term problems as possible, OP. It certainly won't be easy.

Both of my parents had Alzheimer's and would sometimes call to say nice things and sometimes call to say mean things (like when I had to take the car keys from dad). But I saved all of those messages.

I'm intrigued by the idea Alexa was able to show responding in a loved one's voice..a bit creepy since it's nothing we've experienced before as a human race, but I also wonder if it would be calming at the same time?

Cling on to what you have that comforts you. My aunty (mum's sister) had a basic caller display/ caller id unit that only stored about 10 last received calls. She routinely deleted received calls to ensure the last time my mum called her before she died would remain in that unit as a reminder

My mom used to call during an assuredly busy time, and leave long, winding voice-mails that gave me tons of anxiety. I was always frustrated that she wouldn't just text me. She died unexpectedly on January 5. I wish I saved one of those frustrating voicemails...

My Dad passed away around a year and a half ago. I listened to the last few voicemail messages he had left me right after my sister called to tell me he was gone.

I wanted to save those messages so that I could listen to them again, but I was too emotional to go into my voicemail and save them or archive/back them up and they eventually got deleted.

All that to say.... I 1000000000000000000 percent agree with this post. Even if it's painful or difficult, save those messages! You will miss being able to listen to them once they're gone.

I saved my Dad's last voicemail for a long time after he died. I didn't listen to it often, it didn't say anything special, but seeing "Dad" in my list of messages was nice. I finally decided I was being ridiculous and deleted it. Have regretted it many times since.

The thing we miss most about our loved ones is hearing their voice. Hugs, scent, eyes, all that is wonderful but the voice is the music our souls make while we’re here on Earth. Save those voicemails, save those videos!

This! Especially if they have a special name for you or something special they say, record them saying it. My Pop always called me “little sht” and he was “big sht” and it gets to me, more than it should, that I’ll never hear him say it again.

The morning my father died, he called me and left a long voicemail. I was a college student so was knocked out since it was relatively early in the morning. That afternoon I found out he died in a car accident. This was before fancy cell phones and the cloud, etc, so I lost the vm when I got a new phone down the line. It always makes me sad.

I hadn’t heard my nanas voice in 5 years since she passed. My mom recently found a birthday voicemail from the year we lost her and she sent it to me. I cried so hard but it was amazing to hear it again after so long.

I saved the voicemail of my mom singing me happy birthday for my 21st. She was diagnosed with brain cancer the next year. I’m forever grateful for doing that. I sent it to my brother on his 21st birthday

I pretty much don't delete any emails or voicemails or messages from people I know. It's amazing the amount of stuff I can find from 10 or 15 years ago. It really doesn't take up that much space. I honestly don't know why people get so obsessed about deleting messages and stuff. One of the interesting things about listening to really old messages is that I notice I may get something different out of it now than I did 15 years ago. It's hard to explain, but whatever the person says might tell me something I didn't think of back then, but I think of now. It's super interesting.

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i have two from my dad that is gone that i can't handle listening to but i can't delete.

i figure one day i'll be courageous enough to play them.

Same to you friend. The emotion you feel describes their significance.

My dad used to call all the time and I wouldn’t always answer. He would leave messages frequently, and I would save them to remind myself to call back and to call more often. They were honestly a source of some stress for me, but when he suddenly passed away last year out of nowhere I found that I now have recordings of him just talking, singing happy birthday, etc. I treasure them now, definitely save some voicemails from loved ones because you never know.

I recently pulled an old dictaphone out of a box and remembered I had a recording of my grandparents singing happy birthday to me on voicemail on my twenty fifth birthday. It took an afternoon to get it off the device. I had to boot up an old windows seven device and randomly download drivers off a YouTube video and scramble a USB mini cable. Brought tears of joy and love.

This is really touching. Honestly, it made me tear up a little bit because mine are alive and I don’t know if I will ever hear it from them because they don’t want to acknowledge that they had an oops kid from before their current spouse, but it warms my heart to hear that other parents would actually say this to their kids. ❤️

This is also why I suggest people take a short video every Christmas or birthday. No matter how stupid the hair is, or bad the outfits are. You just never know when it’s going to be someone’s last.

I took a birthday video many years ago and someone who’s now passed was in the video. Turns out I was the only one who had ever taken any video of that person. Everyone else only had photos. It’s the only recording of their voice we have, even if the focus wasn’t on them.

This is exactly what I have done. My dad passed about a year ago. I can go back and listen to him sing happy birthday to me every single year. I’m so grateful for technology. Videos. Pictures. Voicemails. With these things, people we love can live on in our memories without fade.

Not a voicemail, but other memories come up in the same light for me.

I had a woman who was my best friend, a big sister to me, and sadly she died, over 10 years ago now. I miss her every day, and even though she could be a little direct and sometimes unemotional, one of the last messages I ever got from her was possibly the most incredible and supportive messages I could've ever asked for.

She passed away suddenly, and I treasured that text - for about a month or three. I had a T-Mobile Sidekick at the time, and those phones didn't locally cache anything beyond reboots. When the T-Mobile Sidekick servers went down when Microsoft bought Danger, they advised I try restarting knowing what was going on, and what effects it could have.

I lost that message, and all of our communications forever.

Do your best to make sure your data is securely backed up, and don't pass up opportunities to make more good memories with your people.

Still have both of my parents. Passed before holidays. But have them saved. (The voicemail.)

Is there anyway I can get old voicemails back? Have had the same carrier for 15+ years

When my father died i found his picture on google maps. I bought a vr headset just to see him anytime I wanted. He is there to this day, in the bar’s outside table, seeing the cars go by, as he loved to do. Google blurred his face, but I can see his smile under it. After that my headset lens get wet, all of sudden.

I guess is the moisture from the weather or something.

Also to add to this, if you are considering switching carriers, back up your voicemails first. Coming from an always iPhone user, my wife lost some of her grandma when we migrated carriers. Luckily I was able to extract them from a local backup.

I have four VMs saved on my account, three of which are from my dad who passed in 2016. They're about absolutely nothing, and it's not quite how I remember his voice from the first 30 years of my life, but goddamn do I value having them to hear him again.

Im hoping I can find some of the vha home movies my mom had of our old birthdays. I want my nephew to see and hear his grandma. She died 4 years before he was born. She'd have lost her goddamn mind over that kid. I miss her.

I still have the VM from twelve years ago of my daughter telling me she’d gotten into medical school.

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I'll agree to this. My wife of 15 years didn't recover from anesthesia from an outpatient procedure. I went into my voice mail soon after she passed and the only message I had still from her was a 3 second hangup from her trying to call at some point in time. I have nothing personal to me with her voice. It was a sucky realization.

I'd suggest shot more pics and video with them while you can. They are far better than voicemails. Don't think that taking pictures or videos are stupid or whatnot, they are great tools to remind you of the experience you had.

I’m sitting in hospice as I write this comment watching my dad fade away. Wish I would have saved some of his voicemails. Sorry your going through this too.

I found an old voice message that I wasn't aware of from my mother a few months after she died and I was just so happy to hear her voice once again. I can not describe how much that meant to me.

This is something I desperately wish I had done before my mom passed 7 years ago.

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You shouldn't delete anyone else's voicemails, it's rude.

TIL people still use voicemail.

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In my personal experience it just made it harder for me to grieve properly but whatever works for you

I still have the voicemail of my mom calling me in a panic that my dad wasn’t breathing. He passed away that night.

I’m a glutton for punishment.

This is very novel advice… but also understand that part of the grieving process is knowing to let go.

I had my mother’s voicemails saved to an old iPhone but eventually got a new one and we turned in my wife’s old device but I kept mine because of the voicemails. A little down the road I had an employee fall on some hard time and she didn’t have a phone (but had a sim) to keep in touch so I offered her my old one. I cleared everything off except those specific voicemails and I told her as such. I eventually left the company suddenly and when I finally ran in to her the topic got around to the phone. She said about a week after I left it got damaged and she was unable to recover it or contact me, so…

I realized I hadn’t listened to them in years. I kept them as more of a charm. Part of me never expected to get that phone back, and I was a little sad at first but we ended our conversation and I felt a little relieved.

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My voicemails are deleted in 3 days if I listen to them once, even if I press save... If I save them on another day after re-listening, the delete date gets extended for, you guessed it, 3 days. So I've given up on saving voicemails for the most part. Using a separate device to record the phone speaker if I really have to.

My VM will always be full & IDC if that inconveniences someone.

When the snarky comments come (well, your VM is STILL fullllll so I couldn't), I say, dead mom. Sorry that's frustrating for YOU.

That usually shuts them up.

Anyone make an UTUBE video of Mom???

Hate voicemails. I never listen to them. Who leaves voicemails ?