While I love playing with technology, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I get it right all of the time (or even a lot of the time!)
In my efforts to keep my phonebook backed up I managed to duplicate most of the contacts on my phone (some people appeared 5 times!!)
Oddly enough my phone didn’t know what to do with multiple instances of the same contact, so I never had a clue who was ringing me or sending me texts.
This evening, while watching TV, I decided to nuke all the duplicates.
In so doing I came across a lot of contact names that meant absolutely nothing to me, which I promptly removed, but I also came across one that did – my grandfather‘s mobile phone number.
I have to say my feelings were really mixed.
On the one hand I was sort of amused, as I know he managed to lose the phone months before he passed away, while on the other it was a sad moment to think that he’s gone.
My grandfather was a wonderful character and most people he came into contact with were very taken with him.
I know he’d have loved to see me married off to a “good woman”, though paradoxically he never took any interest in any of my girlfriends until “after the fact” (He once famously asked me how a “lovely girl” was about 18 months after I’d broken up with her!)
When it came to technology he was always willing to “give it a go” and managed to email some of us from time to time, while also working on his memoirs on his PC (I think he wrote most of them longhand, however). I’ve no idea which of his friends or relatives gave him a mobile phone, as I strongly suspect it was rarely charged (or even with him).
He’s gone now, but as I unbox books and other stuff that I had left stored in various relatives’ houses (long boring story!) I keep “bumping into him”. I find little letters he wrote me over the years in his very particular handwriting.
Of course part of his legacy lives on in me. Though I’m not sure if the hoarding of newspapers is the main bit I want to remember him for!
What a lovely post. It made me sad in a lovely way – I really miss my grandad after reading it – and my dad too 🙁
I can just imagine them both trying to get a handle on twitter 🙂
Thanks so much for posting this.
I have a few numbers on my phone that belong to people that are no longer with us. It is certainly a strange feeling when you come across them. And of course you come across them at the most appropriate time (e.g. scrambling to find a number in this busy life we lead), and it puts everything into perspective.