The Phone Call I Never Made
There's a voicemail I saved for almost three years. My uncle Ray's voice, a little rough around the edges the way it always was, saying he was just calling to check in. Nothing urgent. Just checking in.
I never called him back.
Not because I was angry with him. Not because things were bad between us. Life just kept moving the way it does — there was always something more pressing, some reason to put it off one more day. And then one more. And then Ray was gone, and that voicemail became the last thing I had of him.
I've thought about that a lot lately. Not with the kind of guilt that cripples you, but with the quieter, heavier kind — the kind that teaches you something if you're willing to sit with it long enough.
What I've come to understand is that most of the regrets I carry aren't dramatic. They're not the big blowups or the things said in anger that you wish you could take back. They're the silences. The check-in calls I didn't return. The visits I kept meaning to make. The conversations I assumed we'd get to eventually, as if time were something you could count on like a checking account with an unlimited balance.
Scott Andrew Alpaugh grew up in a family where showing up mattered more than saying the right thing, and I think I understood that in theory long before I understood it in practice. My uncle Ray was the kind of man who'd drive two hours to help you move a couch and never once mention it again. He didn't need acknowledgment. He just showed up. And somewhere along the way I confused his steadiness with permanence.
The strange grace in all of it — and there is grace in it, I believe that — is that his life taught me exactly what his death confirmed. Show up. Call back. Don't let the ordinary moments slip by while you're waiting for the important ones, because the ordinary moments are the important ones. The Sunday afternoon calls. The "just checking in." The drive to help someone move a couch.
I deleted the voicemail last year. Not because I wanted to forget it, but because I didn't need it anymore. I'd finally heard it the way it was meant — not as a reminder of what I'd missed, but as an invitation I was still free to accept, just aimed forward now instead of backward.
I'm slower to assume there's more time than there is. I'm quicker to make the call.
That's what Ray left me. Not a lesson exactly — more like a practice. A daily small decision to not wait until I have something important to say before I say anything at all.
Sometimes checking in is the important thing.
Scott writes occasionally about memory, family, and the slow work of becoming who you meant to be. Find more at andrewalpaugh.com, scottalpaugh.com, and scottandrewalpaugh.com.
Written by Scott Andrew Alpaugh — technology professional and entrepreneur based in Greenville, South Carolina. Also at andrewalpaugh.com and scottalpaugh.com.
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