“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” — Luke 2:19
Some days it’s not the big moments that break me. It’s not the holidays or the birthdays or the milestones I can circle on a calendar and brace for. It’s a Thursday. It’s an ordinary morning. It’s a phone in a drawer.
I couldn’t find Joshua’s phone at first. That sent its own kind of panic through me. I thought, Oh no… did I lose it? How do you lose something that feels like it still has him in it? I started running through possibilities. Maybe one of the kids picked it up, maybe they wanted it the way I want it, as a little piece of him. They loved him too. They want keepsakes too. But still, my heart started racing.
Then I found it. Tucked neatly back in its original box in my nightstand, like I had done the “right” thing and put it somewhere safe. I thought, Good. Safe. Still here. I don’t know why we think that if we can just put things in boxes and drawers and plastic bins, we can keep time from getting to them. As if zipper bags and careful wrapping in tissue paper can stop grief or dust or decay.
I plugged the phone in. The screen lit up with that familiar background photo he took of his favorite fishing spot. It was like seeing his handwriting or hearing the first note of a song he loved. That rush of there he is. Except the cracked screen, worse than I remembered, had somewhere along the way finally won. A large black space crept across a corner of the screen and the touch no longer worked. I couldn’t swipe. I couldn’t tap in the code. I couldn’t get to whatever was in there…his last pictures, his playlists, his notes, the little everyday things people don’t think of as “legacy” but mothers do.
And I fell apart.
It wasn’t because I don’t know how to get a screen fixed. I do. I could take it somewhere, pay the money, probably have it back in working order by this afternoon. That’s not what undid me.
What undid me was the reminder that even the things he left behind won’t last forever.
Nobody tells you that part of grief. People tell you to hold onto the memories, to keep their things, to save the shirts that still smell like them, to frame their handwriting, to back up their photos. And I do…because I’m a mom and because this is all I have on this side. But nobody tells you that even the keepsakes start breaking, fading, peeling, losing battery. Nobody tells you the ink can smear, the shirts stop smelling like them, the devices stop turning on.
Sitting there with a lit-up phone I couldn’t open felt exactly like grief: I know he’s there, I just can’t get to him.
It’s like looking across a river and seeing the place where he used to stand with a fishing pole, sun on his face, proud grin, fish in hand and knowing I can’t get across to him. The spot is real. The memory is real. The love is real. The distance is real too.
That phone was supposed to be an anchor, and instead it reminded me that nothing here is permanent. Not even the things of the person I swear I’ll never forget for a thousand lifetimes.
So I cried. I let myself sob over a cracked piece of glass, because it wasn’t about glass. It was about loss number 1,000, the losses you don’t even know to anticipate. The ones no one warns you about.
And then, when I could breathe again, I told myself this:
- The phone can fail and he is still my son.
- The photos can disappear and his life still mattered.
- The objects can wear out and this love will not.
- The trail can fade and God still sees every step he took.
I will still get the screen fixed because we’re allowed to do the practical things to help our hearts. But I will do it knowing this: what I really want is not in that phone. What I really want is my boy.
And my boy is with Jesus.
