The Phone Call I Almost Didn’t Answer | by Joshua Kelechi | Aug, 2025

Some moments in life arrive without warning — and change everything.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was halfway through ignoring my ringing phone.
I didn’t recognize the number, and I was in no mood for sales calls or wrong numbers.

But something — maybe curiosity, maybe fate — made me pick it up.

“Hello?” I said flatly.

A woman’s voice, shaky but gentle, replied:
“Is this Daniel?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry, wrong number.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she whispered, “I’m sorry… I just needed to hear someone’s voice.”

I didn’t know what to say.

She explained, between pauses, that she had been sitting alone in her apartment all day. Her husband had passed away six months ago. Her grown children lived far away.
She said she hadn’t spoken to another human being in three days.

“I just… didn’t want today to be the fourth,” she said.

We ended up talking for almost twenty minutes. Nothing deep, just small things — the weather, the smell of rain, her favorite book. By the end, she was laughing softly.

When she finally said goodbye, she thanked me like I’d done something extraordinary.
But I felt like I was the one who had been given something — a reminder of how powerful just being there for someone can be.

I never got her name. I never heard from her again. But that phone call changed me.

Now, whenever my phone rings — even from a number I don’t know — I answer.
Because you never know when someone on the other end just needs to be heard.