Two widowers receive sweet messages from beyond the grave

We’ve got two tearjerkers for you this Monday.

Earlier this month, Billie Breland passed away at the age of 83. She left behind her husband of 60 years.

A retired Mississippi schoolteacher, Billie was known for her perfect cursive handwriting and avid note-writing. So it should have been no surprise that, as her health began to fail her, she would plant a final note for her husband, Jimmy, to find.

"We don’t know exactly when she did it, but she left one final note tucked inside her chequebook — but this one wasn’t for her, it was for my Grandaddy, and it perfectly sums up the hope and comfort that comes with knowing you’ll meet again in eternity," the Brelands’ grandson, Cliff Sims, wrote for Yellowhammer News.

Sims shared a photo of the note on Facebook:

“Please don’t cry because I died!” Billie wrote to her husband. “Smile because I lived! Know that I’m in a happy place! Know that we will meet again! I’ll see you there!”

"I’ll never forget the look in my granddad’s eyes when he showed the rest of our family the note — some tears, but a lot of smiles, too," Sims told The Huffington Post in an email.

"That note will be a source of comfort and a reminder that love conquers everything, even death. There’s an indescribable peace that comes with knowing he’ll be reunited with her in eternity."

British pensioner Stan Beaton didn’t have a note to cling to after his wife, Ruby, died, but he did have her voice. Following Ruby’s death in 2003, Stan saved an outgoing voicemail message she recorded so he’d never forget the sound of her voice.

After the phone company performed some technical work in December, however, the 10-year-old voicemail was deleted. Stan thought Ruby’s voice was gone forever.

"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," he told BBC Radio Leeds.

"Sadly it disappeared. 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.”

When Virgin Media, the telecom company, heard Stan’s story, it worked quickly to restore the lost recording.

A video of Stan hearing his wife’s voice again is now going viral.

"They’ve made this old age pensioner extremely happy," Stan said. “It’s just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever. I’m staggered at the lengths they have gone to.”