The Last Voicemail I Never Listened To: A Brother's Agony in Toronto

Thursday at 2:14 PM

I was in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation in an air-conditioned glass boardroom on Bay Street in downtown Toronto. My iPhone vibrated against the polished walnut table: *Rob Calling*. I swiped red. I sent the automated text response: *'Can't talk right now. What's up?'*

A minute later, the voicemail transcription notification popped up: *'Hey David, it's Rob. Just calling to see if you wanted to catch the game on Sunday. No rush, call me when you're free.'*

I told myself I would call him during my commute on the GO Train. But the meeting ran late, my inbox was overflowing, and by the time I walked into my condo, it was 9:30 PM. I thought: *'Rob always stays up, but I'll just call him tomorrow.'* Tomorrow morning at 6:45 AM, my mother's screaming voice broke through my speaker. Rob had suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm in his sleep.

The Audio File We Cannot Bear to Play

That was eighteen months ago. The audio file—twenty-two seconds long—sits saved in my iCloud Drive, backed up on two separate external hard drives, and stored on an encrypted thumb drive in my fireproof safe.

I have not listened to it once. I cannot bring myself to press the play button. The thought of hearing his casual, everyday voice—completely unaware that he had less than twelve hours to exist on this planet—paralyzes my nervous system.

We live in a culture that worships productivity, deadlines, and deliverables. We ignore the people who would sit beside our hospital bed because we are too busy answering emails for companies that will replace us within forty-eight hours of our obituary.

An Unsent Answer

I wrote this memoir on Solas Haven because my chest could no longer contain the weight of that missed Thursday afternoon. If you have an unread message from a brother, a mother, or a childhood friend: close your laptop right now. Dial the number. Let the client wait.

Rob, I would give every dollar I have ever earned to watch that Sunday game with you. Wait for me in the upper deck.