The Dead Mother's Message

Losing my wife to cancer changed everything about my life. After the funeral, people slowly went back to their own routines, and I was left alone in a house that suddenly felt much bigger than it ever had before. Every room reminded me of her. I spent weeks sorting through boxes, putting away medical equipment, and trying to distract myself with anything that kept my mind occupied. One afternoon, while cleaning out a closet, I found an old baby monitor we used years earlier. It had a feature that let us record short voice messages for each other. I smiled when I found it, set it on a shelf, and forgot about it.

A few nights later, I woke up to a faint crackling sound in the bedroom. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I realized it was coming from the baby monitor. The strange part was that it wasn't even switched on. Before I could get out of bed, a voice came through the speaker.

It was hers.

"I love you, Mike... I love you, Mike."

I just froze. I knew that voice better than anyone else's in the world. It wasn't distorted or difficult to recognize. It sounded exactly like she had when she was healthy. The message repeated over and over again. I didn't touch the monitor. I didn't try to stop it. I just sat there in the dark, crying, listening to my wife's voice fill the room for the first time since she died.

Eventually the batteries began to die. Her voice became slower, weaker, and buried beneath bursts of static until the message finally stopped altogether. I replaced the batteries the next day and tried everything I could think of to make it happen again. Nothing worked. The recording never played another time.

I still don't know what happened that night. Maybe it was an old recording that somehow triggered because of a fault in the electronics. Maybe grief makes people notice things differently. Or maybe it was exactly what it felt like—a final chance to hear the person I loved tell me she loved me one last time. Whatever the explanation is, I never got rid of that baby monitor. I don't think I ever will.