A heartbreaking collection of the last messages people received from loved ones

Flickr/Martin Brigden

When you are communicating with someone electronically and lose touch, that moment is often crystallized by your phone's memory. The last message sits there, waiting, until the next time you decide to make contact — if you ever do. This can be particularly heartbreaking when someone leaves your life. 

Late last year, Emily Trunko, a teenager from a small town in Ohio, started a blog called "The Last Message Received." The aim was to show these final messages. In the blog's first few weeks, Trunko told The New York Times she received over 2,500 submissions from anonymous strangers.

The posts that appear on the "The Last Message Received" show the final messages before things like breakups, accidents, and suicides. They are a gut-wrenching reminder that time has a cruel way of slipping away when we least expect it.

Here are some of the most poignant examples: