My mom was my whole world when I was growing up. When I was seven my father left my mom and me after she found him having an open affair with a coworker. He beat her up for having the audacity to leave him, but she got the house and scrubbed him from our lives. She decided she would focus on herself and taking care of other women so she worked for lots of women’s shelters and such. She eventually became a court counselor and social worker for abused women and children, and she really helped people get out of abusive situations. She understood the world isn’t always kind to women.
Being the amazing woman she was, she knew growing up as a girl is already hard, so we had safety codes and phrases built in to keep me safe. She also had a special rule that if I was in trouble, I could call her or text her in our special way and she would come get me, no questions asked, and no consequences. That way if I was in trouble, I could call her without fear of her reaction or punishment. She told me she understood being a teen means making choices of your own, and sometimes those are really stupid choices, but they shouldn’t cost me my innocence. She cared first and foremost for my safety.
When I was eleven I went on my first sleepover and I just wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to go home but I didn’t want my friend’s feelings to get hurt. Our code was two punctuations. If I used two of any punctuation at the end, that meant I needed help or wanted to leave, but didn’t want a person near me to know.
Me: Hey mom!!
Mom: Hey, your uncle just called and I might need to come get you, can you tell your friend you have to leave?
Me: Do I have to??
Mom: Yes, please pack up.
That way I saved face and could blame my mom. I did use it from time to time but it was rare. I knew I always had that safety net growing up, though I was pretty safe in the area we lived in. It was a small town on the outskirts of a college town, and I was advanced for my age so most of my friends were the kids my mom was always around with the shelters, and they were pretty laid back kids for the most part. I also hung around the shelters and the women would talk to me like I was grown, which was nice considering I was closer in age to half of them than my mom was. I didn’t hang out with any rebellious kids and never really did anything stupid enough to be noted until college.
When I started college two years early, I realized really quickly how safe my little town was. I was graduating early and only sixteen, but the college I went to was the one right next to our town, and I could live at home and drive to campus and such. I had gotten drunk a small handful of times but my friends and I were always safe and didn’t drive. My first frat party was…a lot. I’d never seen so many drunk people doing such crazy stuff. It was exhilarating but also really overwhelming. I ended up finding a quiet corner with a few people chilling. I struck up a conversation with a cute guy and he offered to get me a drink. I know, dumb niave girl, I didn’t think twice and drank the drink. About ten minutes later I started feeling really strange and went to the bathroom. I had my phone in my hand, while I heard mister polite knocking on the door, but I could barely see my screen as I texted my mom.
Me: I’m at street redacted can I stay a little past curfew??
Mom: Absolutely not, I’m coming to pick you up RIGHT NOW young lady!
Me: !!
It was all I could see to press in my rapidly blurring state before the guy managed to get the door open and “help” me out of the bathroom. He checked my phone, saw the messages to my mom and with a snide huff, called me a worthless baby, kicked me in the thigh and left me sitting in the hallway alone. I know for a fact my mom got me out of a horrible situation that night. Part of our code was if we included an address, it was an emergency. An address meant DANGER. She had burned that into my memory, know the address, write it down, copy it as a memo on your phone, anything. So I memorized addresses before I went to parties, and she saved me that night.
She didn’t get mad I was drinking or somewhere she had warned me against going, she was just so worried about me and wanted me to be ok. That night she took me to the hospital and they put me on saline and something else to help flush the drug from my system. I just remember mom sitting by my bed looking relieved but still worried. I didn’t realize how dangerous that situation could have gotten, but she did. Beyond that I don’t remember ever needing the code. She talked to me and told me the hard truths of being a young woman in today’s world after I sobered up, and I’ve been very careful ever since.
Last month my mom passed away of a fatal heart attack. She had always had a weak heart and she was saving up money to get a pacemaker but it just didn’t happen fast enough. I was completely devastated. I thought of my mom as a permanent fixture in my life, the rock that was always keeping me grounded and safe. She was immortal in my eyes and I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to move on with my life without my confidant, my protector. I just didn’t know what to do. When I opened her door and she wasn’t there I just cried. Knowing she wouldn’t ever be there again was just so horrible. I texted her phone and it rang on the table. I looked at it and wanted to throw it across the room, but I would never do that. COULD never do that, she loved that damn phone. She loved being able to have her pictures and music all together and play her phone games. She would sit and watch short films and funny videos for hours after she should be sleeping. It was her guilty pleasure, that phone. That’s when the thought struck me.
I remembered the funeral director told me I could place items in her casket that were important to her, and I decided then and there, I would clone her phone on my computer to save all her data and pictures and I would give her her phone. I loved the idea of her playing her phone games and laughing at videos in the afterlife. The thought made me smile and took a sliver of the grief away. I knew it was silly, and I didn’t know how long her cell bill was paid up for, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about how fitting it would be. She always did joke about coming back to haunt me just to play her games and watch videos, so why not give her something to tie her over until she sorted out how to haunt me to get her fix?
Her funeral was sad but lovely. She was surrounded in her favorite flowers, tiger lilies and birds of paradise. Woman after woman came up to me and told me how much of a difference my mom made in their lives. I thought of all the lives that she’d touched and all the people she helped throughout her life. Despite my grief I couldn’t help but to be proud of my mom, and proud to be her daughter. Getting home after the wake and more condolences I finally sat down on mom’s couch and turned my ringer on for the first time since I left for the funeral. Immediately I got a missed text notification.
Mom: I love you too..
I stared at my phone. The text I had sent her the day she died was there right before it, so I knew it wasn’t a spoofed number. I thought for a minute that this was some prank, but I couldn’t figure out who would do something like this. I decided to assume it was a well meaning friend of my mom’s who maybe shared her number.
Me: Please don’t text me from this number. This is my mom’s number and she just passed away.
I waited. I saw the … of typing. My heart was in my throat as I waited to get a text back from whoever was using my mom’s phone number.
Mom: I’m at redacted location can you come visit me??
My heart froze in my chest. I hadn’t noticed on the first message. I was too freaked out. Two periods. I reread the second message, that was the cemetery’s location, with two question marks. She had to have been buried alive! I called the funeral director and begged him to meet me back at the plot, something was wrong. He swore up and down she couldn’t be alive, they didn’t do an autopsy but she was dead. I just cried and begged and showed him the texts until he finally agreed to meet me and help me find out what was going on. I put that phone in my mother’s casket myself before they sealed it and lowered it down, nobody has that phone but her. Finally convinced nothing would soothe my panicked crying, he called an emergency exhumation. The ground was still freshly filled in so getting her dug up fast was easy. They opened her casket and her phone was in her hand rather than in the purse at her side I had put in there with her. On her screen was an unsent message to me
Mom: Under me..
That was the day they found the first body. Teenaged girls had been disappearing over the years at a slightly raised rate for the last six years or so, but most were assumed to be runaways and ignored. Families had begged for the police to look for their children but it fell on deaf ears. It turns out the cemetery caretaker would stake out grieving families. He was stalking the girls and would then kidnap them when they were coming home from school. He would kill them and bury them under fresh graves before putting in the casket and filling them in, hiding all evidence of his crimes in plain sight. After finding his map and his “souvenirs”, they were able to give closure to twenty seven families. To me the most chilling evidence they found that a detective reluctantly showed me at my insistence. It was a collection of pictures of my mom’s funeral where my thirteen year old niece’s picture was circled.
I know you guys are going to ask so I’ll tell you, I did get one last text from my mom. It was a week after all the media calmed down and I was able to return to my grief. It’s hard to grieve when people are questioning you about everything and calling you a hero. I knew I wasn’t but they just didn’t want to listen to my story, they just assumed I saw something before they lowered mom’s casket down. So after I finally got a chance to sit down and be alone, I put on one of my mom’s favorite horror movies, and I texted her one last time. I didn’t expect anything supernatural, I just felt like it would give me a little closure.
Me: I love you mom. I miss you so much. I hope you are happy wherever you are now.
I set my phone down and wiped away the tears that were flowing freely. This movie was still as good as the first time she showed it to me and it’s cathartic to feel these emotions. I was genuinely startled when my mom’s text ringtone went off.
Mom: I love you too honey, and I am.