On Missed Calls, Technology, and 15 Years of Grieving My Mother

Tomorrow marks the 15 year “anniversary” (I hate that word for this) of my mom’s death. I have been tinkering with versions of the following essay for several years, sending it out to a few places, ignoring it awhile, tinkering some more, ignoring it again. But now, I just want to share it. This feels like the right moment.

I have not used this blog in about a year. Perhaps I’ll start using it for writing rather than just updates. Who knows. All I know is that I want to share this piece of writing today. I love my mom, Sharon, and I miss her.

I refer to myself as “Connie” throughout this essay. My mom and my sisters called me and call me that. I am Conyer to everyone else. Don’t get it twisted!

Content note for the coming essay for grief and death.

On Missed Calls, Technology, and 15 Years of Grieving My Mother

There are three screenshots on the right top corner of my desktop screen, each of a different Facebook comment or post on my wall that my mom left to me from somewhere between 2006 and 2010. They are titled:

Mommy loves you

mommy is proud of you!!

She really loves you

I open them rarely, because I’ve memorized the cadence of her typing, her typos, her excessive, effusive punctuation. It matched her voice. “You are my sunshine!!!” But I glance up and to the right often.

—

The last time I spoke to my mom was over Skype from my older sister Page’s apartment in Dongducheon, South Korea. I only called her once that entire, long trip, and even then, we rushed off the call to go to a theatre show in Seoul. I don’t remember the last thing she or I said to each other, but I remember how proud and happy she looked and exactly how she sounded when she said, “I’m a mommy!” as she looked at her two eldest daughters on a screen across the world.

In our family, we always say “I love you” when we hang up. When we walk away. We are an “I love you” family, so I want to think it was that, but it’s “I’m a mommy!” I remember.

“I’m a mommy!”

And then I left.

—

My mom has been dead for fifteen years. Of course I can remember her face. But sometimes, I realize the image I’ve pulled up in my mind is not a memory at all — I am remembering a photograph. I sure as hell wish I had more of them.

—

I wasn’t always like this. Riddled with fear, that is. I’m a middle tier millennial. I got my first brick of a cell phone at sixteen and my first smart one at twenty-one. I didn’t have social media until college (except a secret high school Myspace I used exclusively for posting selfies on the Avenged Sevenfold message boards).

At twenty-one, I took my first international trip. It was 2010. Three weeks alone in Europe with no working cell phone, my only connection to home and anyone I knew was through internet cafes and hostel lobby computers. I liked it that way. I had little fear then.

 Later that same year, I took the aforementioned trip to visit Page in South Korea. Then I went on to Thailand by myself. Alone, and once again, with no working cell phone. As I was walking out of Page’s apartment in Dongducheon to catch the train to Incheon International Airport, she asked me for my hostel information. An afterthought. “Just in case.” I scribbled it down on a notepad as I rushed out. Big sisters, eyeroll, what a worry wart.

 I arrived in Bangkok midday, had some green curry, wandered around for an hour or two, and then returned to my hostel. I only had one day in Bangkok before catching a bus to Chiang Mai, so when some folks in my room asked if I wanted to go out drinking with them that night, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to spend my only day in Bangkok hungover. I asked them to give me a few minutes to think it over. I laid in my bunk in the room crowded with bunks.

I think back now on those minutes with wonder: What if I had just done my usual for that time and taken up any old reason to drink? What if I had quickly gathered my purse and left for the night? While I was laying there, considering my options, a man from reception poked his head into the room and said my name. Someone had called the hotel lobby several times asking for me. No, he didn’t know who it was or why they had called. I sat up in my bunk as much as I could.

I was confused, but I wasn’t scared.

 I went to the computer in the lobby and signed onto Facebook. Maybe the person trying to reach me had sent a message. “EMERGENCY! CALL RIGHT AWAY!” From Page. Fear still hadn’t quite set in.

I logged off and walked to a nearby convenient store to buy an international phone card, then returned and pleaded with the hostel employees for several minutes before they let me use the front desk phone. With the laughter of people passing through the lobby and the sound of street traffic surrounding me, I leaned casually against the front desk and called my older sister.

When Page picked up, she took a breath I recall more clearly than the words that came after.

 Maybe she said, “Connie, Mom is dead.”

 Or “Connie, Mom died.”

 Or “I’m so sorry, Connie. It’s Mom. She’s dead.”

It doesn’t matter, really, because I knew what her words were going to be the moment she took that breath. Such a strange breath.

—

The night before my trip, I went to my mom’s and little sister Cat’s apartment for dinner. I don’t remember what we ate, but it was probably a vegetable pot pie. We sat on the couch and watched TV. Cat and I exchanged looks and laughed at Mom as she nodded off between us. Classic. I woke Mom up when I left.

 As I got into my car, she stood in the doorway with her arm around Cat, waving heartily. Yes, I remember Mom standing in the doorway. I can hear her saying, “Bon voyage!”  

—

I missed another call in 2018.

I had gone to bed uncharacteristically early, because I was coaching at gymnastics competition very early the next day. Starting around 10:30 pm, I missed calls from everyone in the family in several hour intervals over and over again throughout the night. I woke up at 6:30 am to a text: “Page was in an MVA, at hospital.”

 Cat sent me more detailed information, knowing the onslaught of notifications and fear I would wake up to. “MVA means motor vehicle accident.”

 I called her. She filled me in. Page was in the ICU and there were a lot of unknowns.

 I spent the day at the competition unsuccessfully holding back tears as I half-heartedly cheered for my athletes, dipping out between routines to check my phone, calling for updates during the lull between beam and floor, this thing that seemed so important to me the night before suddenly seeming so incredibly fucking trivial.

Another frantic trip home, more crying alone on airplanes. Will I make it? Will I get there in time?

This one had a better ending.

—

Being disconnected from my phone comes with the palpable fear that I’ll miss someone’s last moments. Or the chance to say goodbye. Maybe I won’t buy a ticket home early enough. The heart-in-throat feeling when an uncle-you-don’t-talk-to-much’s name pops up on the caller ID. Why else would they be calling? I feel like I am always the last one to find out. The ability to unplug is a luxury that proximity to death has complicated for me. 

—

Here is the first ending I drafted to this essay in 2023: 

 I haven’t checked my phone since I started writing this. The thought has crossed my mind but I try to push it away. I already spoke with my sisters today and my partner Nate is standing next to me, playing guitar in the sunlight. I haven’t called my Dad in a long time. This thought makes my heart race.

 I am on a blue blanket under a willow tree. It is a beautiful clear sky, and warm, and I am about to cry. I’ll check my phone when I finish this sentence.

And I did. No one was dead.

I know I need to work through this fear. I am genuinely trying. I am making progress. This morning (in 2023), I went for a swim without bringing my phone. I sat with Nate on the dock in the sun. We swam next to a family of merganser ducks. We saw two turtles, one big and one little, a light brown snake slinking across the shoreline, and a small fish with a hook inexplicably through its back. I didn’t worry once. I’ve been doing this often lately. It is progress, and I am proud of myself for it.

 But my chest still hitches and my heart rate elevates if I know I’ll need to be away from my phone or without service for an extended period.

 Or, if it happens unplanned.

 Or if, God forbid, I were to run out of battery. Which has never happened because I would never let that happen because even the thought makes me nervous.

The thought that I nearly left Page’s apartment in 2010 without telling her, or anyone, where I would be for the next two weeks completely blows my mind now.

I was already the last to find out.

How long would I have travelled through Thailand completely unaware that my mother was dead? Everyone else at home in Kentucky, cleaning out the apartment, standing blankly in front of the packed garage, going through her jewellery, opening the trunk of the brand new little red car. Without me.

— 

If my sisters and I miss a call from one another, we always send a follow-up text.

 “Just saying hey!”

 Or “JP wanted to show you his Ouija board!”

 Or “Hashbrown was puking and Page just wanted some upset belly advice!”

It’s common courtesy in our family now. The post-missed-call-anxiety-calming-text.

—

After that strange breath, I ended up on the lobby floor with their phone in my hand. The cord wasn’t quite long enough. I was kneeling. At some point, someone moved me to a chair with different phone in the back corner of the lobby, instead of at the main counter. That phone. That phone was my lifeline for the next twelve or so hours. A kind woman employed at the hostel placed a box of tissues next to me and rubbed my back a while. The group who had asked me earlier if I wanted to go out drinking saw me sobbing in the corner and rushed out the door without saying a word. Someone booked me a flight home, and somehow, I ended up at the airport.

 The trip home from Thailand was thirty-five hours of grieving loudly, publicly, and completely alone. Curled silently into a ball on massage armchairs during layovers. Vomiting in public Tokyo bathrooms after taking six shots of sake in a row while sobbing, staring straight back at the restaurant full of people eyeing me. Crying constant, quiet, tears onto a kind old woman’s shoulder on my connection from Minneapolis to Louisville.

 Soon after, I got my first smart phone. I had been on my mom’s phone plan. As I deactivated my old phone, I realized one second too late that I had lost my saved voicemail of Mom saying, “Call yo’ mama.” The countless text message exchanges between us.

How lucky were my sisters and I to have a mom that loved us like this, and how unlucky to lose that love so young, before we knew exactly what we had. Now we know. Now I know.

I look at her words on my desktop and I try to hear her. Often I fear I’ve forgotten her voice, her thick Paducah accent, the exact way she sang the Oreo song, “Which way to the beach?” and “Call the car kids!” every time we left the grocery store, until I dream.

 When Cat digitizes some old home videos from the early 90’s, and we hear her voice, we all wonder together, was her accent really that strong? Were we just used to it? We marvel at her voice. I replay the clip of her looking at Cat’s little face and saying, “She’s wonderful,” over and over again.

I started recording my life much more thoroughly. Now, I am envious of people with more well-documented parents. Now, I like taking pictures of my food, of Nate while he practices guitar, of my family sitting around doing nothing, of the trees moving in the wind. Look at that frog, at that hotdog on the sidewalk. Look at how my niece Claire did my make-up, how she dances at her recital. Look at my nephew JP practicing his flips on the trampoline.

When people chastise others about videoing at the concert, to live in the moment, I want to shake them and shout; I just want to be able to remember this later. Memories fade. Faces fade. They fade so horribly, terrifyingly fast.

How lucky am I now that when the next person I love dearly dies, to have a richer catalogue of photos to jog my memory of their life? Of their face?

Some people brag about deleting their Facebook/Meta accounts but I log into mine every day, and eagerly await my “memories,” the ones that don’t fade, hoping it will be one that my mom commented on with her trademark exclamation points, typos, inappropriateness, saying “my sweet Connie”, always expressing her love, so I can screenshot it and add it to my “Mommy Screenshots” folder.

 I am sure there are repeats, but I will take the same screenshot every year. I reread our messages. Sometimes I send her one. I tell her about my life now. I haven’t for a long time because lately I have felt sure she knows in other ways. But I like having the option.

—

In 2017, I went to Scotland for a few weeks and ended up in some remote places without Wi-Fi or cell-phone service. It was an affirming trip for me, my first attempt at a big solo trip again since that one, and I took countless beautiful photographs throughout. But multiple people knew my pre-planned itinerary. I checked in at every possible opportunity.

 My sisters and I share location with each other, and let one other know if we are going somewhere where we may not have service, and where we will be. Maybe these are just standard things that everyone does or should do. But for me, the assumption everything will be the same when we return from these moments off the grid, away from one another, is an illusion that is simply no longer real.

Loss changed my relationship to technology profoundly.

Grieving has made me appreciate, rather than distaste, the ways in which I am quickly reachable for my loved ones, and the ways in which they are quickly reachable for me. I like that if Page or Cat aren’t responding to my messages, to see when they were last active, to see if they are driving, or home. I appreciate that Nate texts me if he is running late, his arrival times, if he is going to stay and hang out with his friends a little longer than planned. I love that my grandpa sends me clown emojis when I ask about his pacemaker surgery. I also know, that sometime soon, I will absolutely regret not texting him more often. I still don’t call my Dad enough

Is this living in fear? Maybe. Perhaps it’s also living in appreciation.

 I carry a tool that allows me to see my two sisters’ faces across the world, in moments. All the pictures I never have to delete. My loved ones’ mannerisms and voices are stored for infinity in the cloud.

I feel so horribly, guiltily jealous of people who lose their parents late in life, with a pre-knowing, with the ability to say goodbye.

To watch someone grow old.

To lose someone and know you’re losing them.

To know you need to remember these moments.

To know what you need to say.

To be old enough to know it.

I didn’t appreciate my last Skype call with my mom. I didn’t know I needed to.

In the last year of her life, how many phone calls from my mom did I miss because I was out drinking with my friends? How many dinners did I cut short? Now I’d linger. Now I’d stay. I’m staying.

—

“I’m a mommy!” on repeat in my head.

Her face. Mostly photos.

“Bon voyage!”

I latch on to her voice instead.