When my brother died, my mother had a helluva time cancelling his cell phone plan. I don’t remember her complaining about packing up his clothes or planning the funeral, but I remember hearing her end of the phone conversation with the customer service rep at Verizon.

“No one has used this phone,” she had cried. “My son is dead.” I don’t know what the customer service rep said on the other end, perhaps that someone must have been calling the phone. My mother raged, reminding him again and again that her son was dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Her final comment, before hanging up in anger, was, “Well the roaming charges sure must be expensive in HEAVEN!” Afterwards, she loved recounting that story, how she put that guy in his place. But that day, after she hung up, she trembled for hours.

I never told her that it was my fault.

The roaming charges, that is. They were my fault. I had been calling Herb’s phone since he died. In the morning. At night. Just to hear a part of him that still sounded alive. But I didn’t want anyone to know I was calling him, so I would open his phone up and delete my empty voicemails. I was calling a ghost, but in the voicemail messages, I was the ghost: just a silence, a breathing in and out. I was the stalker and the ghost and the void.

His voicemail message was short: You got Herb. You know what to do.

But I didn’t know what to do. 

I kept calling him.