That Number Is Unlisted Now

Joe and I got new phones this week, the snazzy Palm Pre Plus, our very first smartphones.

Although the phones were free (Woo!), the mandatory data plan will increase our phone bill by a fat chunk o' change each month. Therefore, I have resolved to use lots and lots of unlimited data so that I get my money's worth. Look out, YouTube!

Anyway, we did run into a couple of snags, the most notable being the fact that Verizon's nifty little Backup Assistant application only assists you when you're uploading your contacts. After it finishes doing that, it quickly wipes off its hands and hangs up its apron and clocks out.

Oh yes, there is a workaround. You have to export your Contacts from MyVerizon into a .CSV file, log into Google Mail, import the .CSV, and then sync your Contacts from the Pre.

This all worked fine, except that the Pre, who was being a cranky little bastard, only synced up 10 out of 114 contacts.

Gah. Then! Joe's phone, deciding to out-cranky my phone, refused to activate. Eventually we ended up at a Verizon store, where the lovely helpful sales associate (whose name I stupidly did not remember) activated the phone. I then asked him if he could transfer my contacts from my old phone to my new phone, because another Verizon store had done that the last time we changed phones. He could, for $10.

Sold.

Since then I have been playing with the phone. I downloaded a Twitter app, and a Solitaire game, and I figured out how to flick, and throw, and tap.

Then I thought I would go through my Contacts and clean them up. I tapped the Contacts icon and right there, under A, was Anna Wise.

Mom.

My heart dropped into my feet and, once again, my throat filled up with stones. I stared at the phone number for a minute. I thought just do it, just delete it, she's not going to answer if you call it, her number's unlisted now, stop being a baby.

I pressed Delete and it was gone.

In a rush I deleted her cardiologist, the assisted living nurse, the nursing home social worker, the hospice nurse, the hospice chaplain, the hospice social worker, the nursing home room phone, the nursing home nurse's station, the Leisure World number.

Then I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.

It was freeing, in a way, this letting go of her many numbers. It was good. Like the dream I had last week, where we were driving down the road in a cool convertible, sun shining down and wind blowing, and I thought that I was wrong about her dying, because there she was! Right there!

But I realized that I was dreaming, in that lucid dreaming sort of way, and as soon as I did, Mom vaporized and the tiny particles of her swirled off into the sky like a plume of smoke.