"Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

-- Norman Mailer

Today I hate answering machines.

Until today, I have been as numbly accepting of them as anyone else. When I call to talk to an old friend, and instead of hearing their warm, welcoming voice on the other end of the line, I hear the mechanical whir that distorts their clear tone, I accepted it, as everyone does. As we all know, it is next to impossible to talk to a human, nowadays. Certainly not to be expected on the first try.

My family has an answering machine, and we leave it on all the time. A lot of people do that now. Not because we are so rude or uncaring, but more of a defensive measure. Telemarketers – people who do not know us, nor care about us anymore than we know or care about them. Yet they would call us by the hour, trying to sell us something we do not need nor want. They will not talk to a machine, either, so we are spared that, the heartbreaking, soul-numbing "No" you must give to cut their speech of, the one so routinely memorized and emotionlessly delivered, over and over again until you wonder what can be left of their minds, after hours of such a dehumanizing job.

But that is not what makes me hate answering machines this day. Today is different – and yet, in a way, it is no different from any other day. Only that a lady I knew from church, always kindly and smiling, has passed away this day. Not unexpectedly, or at the hands of tragedy. She lived well into her nineties, a good full life, with her children and her grandchildren, and even a sweet great-grandbaby near her.

It was the way I learned of this that distresses me more than anything. I came into the kitchen, with the small counter where we keep the buffer between ourselves and the rest of the world. And there, between someone calling about linoleum tile my mother had ordered from the store, and a request from the college for a payment for the summer class I’m taking, was a message from a church member: "Sister Ruth is gone home to be with the Lord today."

Surely someone who has been as kind to me as she has deserves something more dignified. She always had a smile for me, and a grandmotherly hug. She would tease me about my boyfriends to make me blush, then tell me how pretty I looked with the color on my cheeks. To be slipped in between all the other nagging routines of life is incongruous, and I rebel against this. Not that I blame the lady from church; it is not her fault that our culture has made this acceptable.

I remember a call that came on the old answering machine I used to keep in my bedroom, for the calls on the phone my sister and I used to share. It sounded like an elderly gentleman’s voice, heavy with sorry. He left a long message about the church where the services for someone else’s grandmother were to be held. But I was not "Denise," the unknown girl who may never have found out that her grandmother had passed away until it was too late. He didn’t leave a return phone number, and it was a long time before I stopped feeling guilty about it, wondering if the girl it was intended for ever found out.

There are some things we just shouldn’t leave in the unpredictable hands of machines. At times it seems that it is just too easy to disconnect ourselves from the lives of others, to turn a shoulder of apathy and disregard. Too easy to see ourselves dying a little bit every day, instead of making it a point to seek life and connection and the true reality in ourselves, and those around us.