My mom died six years ago. Pancreatic cancer. Three months from diagnosis to funeral. I was 31, and I thought I was prepared. I wasn't.

The day after she passed, I called her phone. I don't even remember deciding to do it. My fingers just dialed the number I'd known since I was eight years old, and then I heard her voice.

"Hi, you've reached Barbara. I can't get to the phone right now, but leave me a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can. Have a blessed day."

I broke down in my car in a Walgreens parking lot. I called it six more times that day. Then twelve times the next day. I became terrified that the phone company would disconnect the line.

So I kept paying the bill.

I told my wife I cancelled it. She watched me "make the call" to customer service—I actually called my own work voicemail and pretended to go through the cancellation process. I feel sick every time I think about that lie, but I couldn't explain it to her. I couldn't explain that I wasn't ready to let that voice disappear into nothing.

I set up a separate checking account. I have the statements sent to my work address. Every month, $47.83. I've done the math. It's over $3,400 now. That's a vacation. That's half a used car. That's my daughter's braces that we put on a payment plan because money was "tight."

And I don't care. I'd pay ten times that.

I call the number at least once a week. Usually from my car during lunch. Sometimes late at night when I can't sleep and my wife is breathing softly beside me, completely unaware that I'm lying there thinking about a dead woman's voicemail.

There are things I never got to say to her. I never told her that I knew she was scared at the end, even though she pretended not to be. I never told her that I found the letter she wrote me, the one she hid in her jewelry box "for later," and that I read it at 3 AM the night before her funeral and wept until I vomited.

I never told her that I forgave her for the years she drank too much, for the graduation she missed, for the way she sometimes made me feel invisible. I never told her that none of that mattered in the end. That she was my mom and I loved her and I wasn't ready.

I'm 37 now. I have two kids. My daughter is starting to look like her. Same crooked smile. Same way of tilting her head when she's thinking hard about something.

Last month, I got a letter from the phone company. They're discontinuing support for her old plan. I have to switch to a new one or the line gets cancelled. I spent four hours on the phone with customer service, being transferred to six different people, trying to explain that I needed to keep this specific voicemail recording on this specific line.

The last representative, a woman named Denise, finally understood what I was really asking. She went quiet for a moment, then said, "Sir, I lost my daddy two years ago. Let me see what I can do."

She saved it. Ported everything over. The voicemail survived.

I cried and thanked her so many times she probably thought I was unstable. Maybe I am.

I know I should tell my wife. I know this isn't healthy. I know that $47.83 a month for a ghost's voice is something a therapist would have a field day with.

But every time I hear "Have a blessed day" in my mother's voice, I'm eight years old again, and she's still alive, and she's going to call me back as soon as she can.

I'm just still waiting.