I loved visiting the cemetery. The peace it brought made it easier to visit my mother’s grave growing up. She’d passed away when I was 9 years old, and the way the cemetery looked made the grief subside sooner than it would’ve if it had been a dark, depressing, run-of-the-mill graveyard. It didn’t feel as if I was amongst dead people, it felt as if I were amongst their spirits - still full of life and love.
I’d talk to my mother for hours and went there as often as possible. We only lived round the corner, so my father would let me go by myself. I’d stop by after school, or to eat my lunch, or bring her a gift. No matter what I was there for, I’d stay for as long as I possibly could. As I got older, my visits to the cemetery didn’t dwindle. It never stopped being my favourite place to go.
When I was 20 years old and engaged to the man of my dreams, Charlie, I fell pregnant. She was an unplanned baby, but we never had any second thoughts about keeping her and were excited from the start. We named her Tiffany Katherine, as Katherine was my mother’s name. I immediately began taking Tiffany to the cemetery to visit my mother, and we had some wonderful picnics and beautiful moments there as a family. Tiffany seemed to have made an immediate connection with my mothers grave, perhaps even stronger than the one I had, and I adored the bond she’d made already with her grandmother.
Then, one dreadful morning, I got a call from one of my sisters that something terrible had happened. “Mum’s grave’s been robbed,” Beth squeaked. “Her body’s gone. Her casket’s empty, it’s as if someone’s cleared it out completely, and the police can’t find any evidence to who could’ve done it. I’m so sorry, Mandy.” I almost dropped the phone. I wanted to scream and wake up from this horrible nightmare. I couldn’t utter a word and eventually my husband came in to see me standing there in shock, phone in hand, whilst my sister repeated ‘Mandy? Mandy, are you there?’ over and over again. I don’t remember much after that.
Time seemed to go by in a blur. So many long almost never-ending conversations with my father, my siblings, the police, practically everyone, yet none of them ever got us anywhere. We had to accept there was nothing we could do. I didn’t stop visiting my mother’s grave, though. Her presence didn’t feel like it was there anymore, but I couldn’t stop going. I hoped she’d see me and hear me, that she could do something to help us find out what happened to what was left of her.
As time went on, Tiffany reminded me more and more of my mother. I insisted she was my mother reincarnated, and began calling her ‘Kathy’ occasionally. Eventually, I didn’t call her ‘Tiffany’ anymore, or even ‘Tiff’ or ‘Tiffy’. She was Kathy. When my husband referred to her as anything other than Kath, Kathy, or Katherine, I got angry. I considered changing her name to Katherine completely, but Charlie refused. Her love for baking from such a young age, her style in clothes, even the way she looked; she was my mother. She was Katherine Alice Tailor through and through.
Time flew by and we gave up on trying to find out what happened to my mother a long time ago. My little girl turned six and I started to notice some changes in her behaviour. She began to be more withdrawn, wouldn’t sing or talk to herself anymore, coughed a lot, and seemed to be getting paler. I asked Charlie about it and we agreed to take her to a doctor, but the doctor said Tiffany was just a little bit under the weather and would recover soon.
He was wrong.
She began purposefully undercooking or poisoning food, so I had to stop letting her help me cook. It became more and more difficult to have her around, especially when she started hurting herself. She’d rip out clumps of her whilst screaming and laughing, or slam her head and body against walls and sharp corners. Nothing we tried ever helped her or stopped her.
Eventually, it was revealed what was causing this. My obsessive borderline-psychotic belief that she was my mother turned out to be true in the most horrific way imaginable. We attempted an exorcism as a last resort and even that didn’t work.
I miss calling her Tiffany. I miss cooking with her and colouring with her and watching TV with her and going on days out as a happy family. Now she rests in my mother’s grave, she said that’s where she belongs. We kept her there, alive, for as long as we could until she refused to eat the food we brought her, stopped replying to us when we talked to her, and she passed away a few months after she started ‘living’ there. Beneath the ground. Where my mother’s body used to lay.
I held onto her hand tightly and sobbed nonstop when we visited her for the last time. We never held a funeral. I keep a plaque for her in our front garden and look at it every day.
I still visit the grave. I talk to her -and my mother- at least once a week. I can feel their presences, and it brings me that same sense of ease it did when i visited my mother as a child.
I had more children after her death. Two gorgeous girls and three handsome boys, all with their very own likes and dislikes, and none of them ever meeting the same fate Tiffany did. Charlie and I never told them the real cause of Tiffany’s death - we simply said she was unwell and she’s at peace now, which isn’t a lie.
I myself am a grandmother now. I do still live in fear that one of my younger grandchildren could take after whatever Tiffany had wrong with her - Ava in particular asks a lot of questions about her, she’s always been curious about her ever since she first learned to ask questions.
She’s 8 years old and very smart for her age, too. She isn’t showing any signs whatsoever that Tiffany did, which is a relief. In fact, she’s barely been ill at all a day in her life, and never gets tired of her passions or hobbies.
Sometimes, though, I catch her drawing pictures of a girl with long brunette hair and dark brown eyes; I asked her who it is a couple of days ago and she said, word for word,
“She’s my friend who protects all of us from bad things. She said at our tea party yesterday that she misses her mum because she didn’t have much time with her, and I know you didn’t have much time with your mum either so maybe that’s why she says she loves you all the time.
She said she met a man whilst she was playing outside that said he’d be able to make her mum happy again if she wrote her name on a piece of paper, but it made her mum sad instead and took her away from her mum. She tells me never to trust strangers and never sign pieces of paper with special stars on them.
Oh, and she said she wanted me to tell you she’s sorry for what happened and Kath-something is in the church scary place with the stones in Enfield underneath a um rose bush. Do you know what she’s talking about, Nana?”
I’m writing this now as I have no idea how to react or what to do. Is it possible she’s talking to my Tiffany? Should I go to where Ava told me my mother is? Should I tell someone?