- I’ve always loved my mother, but our relationship has always been complicated.
- When she started texting me in her 80s, our communication started to feel lighter.
- I’m so glad that I have our texts to look back on now.
Mother-daughter relationships can be challenging, and my relationship with my mother was no exception. But one thing my mother and I could always do was talk — whether in person or on the phone — though our chats often ended in some sort of argument. If we could figure out how to have shorter conversations, we would have been just fine.
An intellectual and a therapist, my mother had a penchant for delving deep, and sometimes I just wanted the short catch-ups my friends had with their mothers, but this wasn’t how we did things. I needed to find my own way, so I moved away from home to explore.
Then, after years of living in different cities, I was ready to come home. And with this return to my old ZIP code, I inherited endless family obligations and outings. This also meant more phone calls with my mom to make plans.
When we started texting, our relationship changed
When the pandemic hit, it was the first time I had not seen her regularly since I moved back. I began to miss her and her constant questions. There were no more Sunday dinners, sushi, or long talks in her living room. Instead, we started to do something we’ve rarely done. We began to text. And then, something magical began to happen.
It started off simple.
Our texts were the short check-ins I’d always wanted, as one or the other of us would send a simple, “Doing OK?”
In lieu of children, I sent her pictures of my foster kittens. To my surprise, on the days when I didn’t, she requested more.
“Where are the grandkits?” she wrote.
And I would blow up her phone with photos of adorable felines.
Over time, our text conversations got longer, but the tone was still light and easy. When I sent her pictures of sweet donut peaches from a farm upstate, she thanked me and sent a peach icon. She took to technology right away.
These are the cutesy conversations I would never have imagined from my mother. Yet they were as sweet as the fruit I bring to her. I finally got my own version of “normal.”
As we started texting each other more, we had fewer intense conversations and, as a result, less tension. Instead, I began to send short messages almost daily, and started to feel closer to her. Before texting, it had felt stressful to get a call from my analytical mother; texting brought levity, and I started to look forward to hearing from her. It brought a balance to our relationship and allowed me to appreciate our longer in-person conversations, too. In some ways, I think it saved our relationship.
I’m grateful I have our texts to look back on
After a while, I wanted to spend more time in person with her, talking and belly laughing. Somehow, about a year after introducing texting into our relationship, the friction had dissipated. But soon, my mother fell ill. She didn’t have a diagnosis yet, but her energy started to wane, and it was clear something was wrong. Now I was the one calling her to check in, and she was the one who needed to get off the phone.
I visited my parents in Upstate New York for Father’s Day weekend in 2022, and even brought the kittens with me. We made a Sunday night dinner together, the first in a long time. We talked about film, life, and politics, and then my mother rested. This was unusual; she typically loved to sit and talk for hours. To comfort her, I went to Home Goods and picked up cough drops, scented soaps, and the brightest coral towels I could find to brighten her mood.
The day after I left, I texted my mother, worried she was more tired than usual.
I sent a lovely picture of the two kittens perched on my ottoman and wrote, “Same as it ever was…”
She wrote back a few minutes later. The text read, “Delicious as always.”
That was our last text. She died a week later.
The first thing I did was look back at our correspondence. I am gifted with these modern-day notes — digital proof of just how much my mother truly loved me. How fortuitous, I thought, to spend her last weekend together. What a gift to have made our peace before it was too late. How wonderful to have all these texts of our relationship 2.0.
