Man bursts into tears after hearing voicemail from wife who's been dead for 14 years

There are many keepsakes that we can have after losing a loved one, and the modern world has left us with the opportunity for a new kind.

Losing a loved one is something that can't be fully understood until you have experienced it for yourself, and over time memories of a person may not fade, but the picture is not so clear.

After losing his wife Ruby in 2003, Stan Beaton had preserved one thing which would remind him of her.

This was a recording of her voice on an answering machine, something which might seem entirely mundane, but which suddenly becomes a precious part of a lost loved one captured.

BBC

That is, until maintenance work being carried out on the phone line by Virgin Media led to the message being deleted, meaning Stan could no longer be reminded of his wife's voice.

Fortunately, a team from Virgin Media was able to hunt down the message and restore it for Stan.

For the first time in 14 years, he was able to once again hear his late wife's voice.

He told BBC Radio Leeds: "They've made this old age pensioner extremely happy. It's just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever. I'm staggered at the lengths they have gone to."

Stan told how he had always stuck with Virgin before, because changing companies would have meant the message would have been lost.

He said: "I've always resisted changing companies because whenever I mentioned that my wife's voice was our voicemail message and would it be retained and each company said no, so that's why I never changed."

But then, the message was lost.

BBC

"Sadly it disappeared," said Stan.

"I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry.

"In the early days [I listened to it] quite often. Basically it came to the point when if I felt low then I would listen to it.

"In December I learned that it had disappeared. I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me."

Luckily, the message was still hanging around deep within the company's archives somewhere, and they were able to retrieve it and restore it to a delighted Stan.

Losing a loved one can mean that we sometimes have a faded idea of that person's voice, or their movements, or mannerisms.

A recording of someone doing something as mundane as asking people to leave a message is a precious thing, and we're so glad Stan got to experience that again.