Mini Review: PartyLine message recorder for a memorial

In July, a reasonably fit, healthy, fun and dear 71-yo friend, Mike Sangster, got up in the middle of the night, probably to take a piss, slipped or lost his footing, hit his head and died.

His family very nicely delayed the memorial service until Norval made it here from Costa Rica. We picked out the music for the specifically non-religious service, officiated by an “End Of Life Doula," a wonderful woman named Cindie Smith. There were about 25 family members and 22 members of the Q community there.

By pure coincidence, a couple weeks before the service, a friend mentioned that he and his partner were running a side business called PartyLine. It’s a thing that looks exactly like a 1970s desk telephone (us telephony geeks would all it a “Five Hundred Set”) where people can leave messages, advice, best wishes etc for e.g. at a wedding event, for the happy couple.  You pick up the phone, hear a short message just like an answering machine, a beep, and you have two minutes to record a message. You just plug its wall wart in to any wall outlet and it boots up and is ready to take calls half a minute later.

He said I could have one to try out some time, and I checked with Mike’s sister and she was enthusiastic, so I arranged to get it to the funeral home.  I made a poster for to go with it the table, and the PartyLine people recorded a similar message.  I talked to Cindie the doula, and she suggested that she would mention it after the service, and at the reception I would tell people about it.  So, we did that. 

Ten people left messages; no one requested that their name be withheld. The messages are almost unbearably touching… I can only listen to one or two at a time without being overwhelmed. I have archived them in the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia, in a link off Mike’s page.

Cindie suggested the device would be great for baby related parties too - to record messages for the baby to listen to in 10, 20, 50 years.

I think as part of the grieving process this is pretty nice, as a part of recording history this is pretty nice. Will do again.

The company with the equipment is PartyLine, www.partyphone.ca.