When we lose a loved one, their belongings often become cherished keepsakes, holding memories that bring comfort. For Julie (@juliannaharveyx), buying her grandparents’ car unearthed a heartwarming memory of conversations with her grandfather, affectionately known as “Pop-pop.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Inga SV
Julie shared this heartwarming moment on TikTok, filmed inside her grandfather’s 2003 Cadillac. The car’s built-in recorder had preserved a voice recording from nearly 20 years ago. “My pop-pop passed away in December 2022. I just recently bought my grandparents’ car and found the recording of us from almost 20 years ago,” she wrote in the overlay text of the video.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Andrea Piacquadio
Behind the text, the video shows her hand pressing a black button on the built-in recorder. As she presses the button, a long “Hellloooo!” reverberates. Then her grandfather’s voice comes on. “Hello! Is that you, Julie?” her grandfather can be heard saying in the recorder. “Did you want to talk to pop-pop while we’re driving around in the car? Do you want to make a new message?” There is a momentary silence. Then the grandpa teases her by saying “Cat got your tongue? Did you forget how to speak, did you?” She just said, “I don’t have a big mouth!”
Millions of people were touched to the heart by Julie’s short video. So many people said that they were weeping, sobbing, and crying. Many were reminded of their own grandparents and how it breaks their hearts to know that they will never hear their voices again. @femcides commented, “I’m in literal tears this feels straight out of a movie and he sounds so sweet.”
Image Source: TikTok | @danielle8darroch
Image Source: TikTok | @knowmenoudont9
@paiji_ wrote, “I just realized after 20 years I don’t remember my grandpa’s voice,” with a heartbreak emoji. @amber_shenae_nay shared their own experience of loss, “I have a voicemail from 2017 before my papa passed and occasionally I’ll listen to it, so bittersweet to hear their voice yet remember they are no longer here. I’m sure you were so happy to find this!”
@chris_h_spam, whose comment appears at the top of the comment section requested a “pop pop reveal.” In reply to this comment, posted a follow-up video, sharing a carousel of photographs of herself and her pop-pop sharing random moments in places like a house, outdoors, a restaurant, etc. Julie, who is now the mom of a toddler boy named Dylan, added the mellifluous track “These Memories” by Hollow Coves in the background of the carousel. “He was the best! I found out I was pregnant the night after he passed,” she captioned the nostalgic video.
You can follow Julie on TikTok to catch more glimpses into her family life.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
Gif of Robin Williams via
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.