After my grandmother died, her phone wouldn’t stop lighting up. Pharmacy reminders. Spam calls. Missed deliveries. Every vibration felt like a small resurrection, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off. Powering it down felt like losing her twice.
Weeks passed. One night, exhausted, I opened the last unread text.
It was from me.
“Can I call you later?”
There was no reply. I remembered sending it—rushing out the door, promising I’d call when life slowed down. It never did.
I carried that guilt with me until the day I went to her apartment to return the phone. The place still smelled like lavender and toast. I packed slowly, touching everything as if it might vanish.
That’s when I noticed the drafts folder.
There was only one message. No recipient.
“If you’re tired, don’t apologize. Rest is not failure.”
I sat on her bed and cried. Later, my mom explained that after my grandfather died, my grandmother wrote messages to herself—words she wished someone had told her. She kept them in drafts. “Someday someone might need them,” she said.
She never sent that message.
But I read it exactly when I needed it.
I turned the phone off that night. The room felt quieter, but not emptier.
Months later, when my dad apologized for needing help, I wrote the sentence on a note and left it by his bed. He read it and squeezed my hand.
Some messages don’t need a sender.
They arrive when they’re meant to.
