My Dead Mom Tricked Me Into Answering My Phone

The only explanation I can think of for what happened at the therapeutic riding stable on Friday, is that my Mom, who died in 2011, figured out how to call me via my daughter's phone number.

My sister, Heather, and I were at Prestige Therapeutic Equestrian Center with our Dad, enjoying his first healing visit with the horses. Dad has mid-stage dementia and lately he has slipped down into a deep hole of depression, anger and even physical violence with members of the staff at his residential facility. We hoped sparking his lifetime love of horses could lift his mood and maybe bring the real Dad back a little closer to the surface. Grooming and nuzzling the beautiful 'therapists,' Dotty and Sage, seemed to be working as hoped; his eyes lit up and he had a smile on his face the size of Texas. Heather and I reminisced through our childhood horse stories with him and he was able to recall the names of horses from 40 years ago, when he founded one of the nation's first therapeutic riding programs at the Texas Lions Camp.

As I was trying to capture all this goodness in photos, my phone kept blowing up with, "How is he doing?" and "Is he having fun?" and "What's happening now?" Answering would take me out of the moment, so I turned my phone off. To be clear, I turned the ringer off, and turned on the Do Not Disturb function which silences all notifications, and stuck it in my back pocket.

A few minutes later, I heard the distinct sound of my daughter calling. Her ringtone is a super-annoying recording of Stewie from Family Guy relentlessly repeating, "Mom, Mommy, Mommy, Mama, Mama, Ma, Ma, Ma..." It is unmistakable from my general ringtone (the Muppets 'Mahna Mahna') or Hubby's ringtone (Tom Petty's 'You're Keeping Me Alive') or any other ringtone in my phone. I intentionally made it very unique and very intrusive because if The Kid is using her phone as an actual PHONE, something big is going on and I need to hear it.

Which is why, when I heard Stewie mewling "Mom, Mamma..." I immediately tried to answer the phone. But she wasn't there. In fact, the phone wasn't ringing at all. I checked recent calls, thinking maybe she had accidentally butt-dialed and then hung up before I could answer, but there was no record of the call.  In case you're wondering -- I know there's a way to specify exceptions for certain people to be pushed through the Do Not Disturb setting, but I use DND so rarely that I've never bothered to create those exceptions, so DND should be airtight for my phone.

"Okay, that's weird. But phones do weird things." I decided to figure it out later, and quickly texted The Kid some pics of Pawpaw with the horses. My spooky little psychic daughter instantly replied,

"Grammy is yelling with joy in my head! Her happiness is making me tear up, oh my Lord. What a burst of energy I just got!"

Magic. Chills. Tears. We relayed her message to Dad who threw his head back and laughed out loud. Later that night I verified with Alijah, "Did you call me today -- right before I sent you those pictures?" Nope. From her side of things, I sent the photos out of the blue and then Grammy started yelling with joy in her head. I can picture Mom, on the other side, calling out to me and Heather and being so frustrated with her oblivious, incommunicado daughters that she ghost-shrugged, gave up and used her granddaughter as a portal instead. She knew that was the one call I would answer.

This is not the first time that Mom has sent us messages; she once sent me a greeting card via the produce section of the grocery store. Mom was a world-class communicator. Always loud, always animated, laughing, vivacious. Not even death could stop that woman from expressing her joy and I'm so grateful that she has continued to do just that. Thanks for calling, Mom.