"Hi, it's me."

Something startling happens when I call my mom's cell phone and she doesn't answer. The voice mail greeting reminds me, in my sister-in-law's familiar voice:

"Ron Gray is not available." 

Tell me about it. From a dripping ceiling in our daughter's room to our congregation's looming capital campaign; from our son's pending high school graduation to farmers preparing their fields for spring planting - I'm acutely aware of my father's absence. Even after a year and a half, the declaration stills jars me.

My parents held on to their first cell phone for years, passing up free upgrades and newer models in favor of one they knew how to use. Once bound by the awkwardness of a party-line shared with neighbors up and down their rural road, mom and dad learned to text. Once cautious about the expense of long distance calling, they learned to call for no reason - unlimited minutes were used to report monarch sightings or a new kitten or the death of a neighbor or a funny story.

I suspect that clunky cell phone, replaced only after my dad's death, sits in a kitchen drawer at the farm. Though its chirping crickets and croaking frog ringtone is now silenced, it still holds little bits and pieces of our lives - texts and pictures and voice mail messages collected and forgotten over many years. That it once had the power to connect me to my dad on the best and worst of days or for no reason at all makes it - for now, for me - too precious to throw away or recycle.

My mom is savvy enough to change the greeting on her new phone - but I hope she won't.