Texts from the grave!
Sadie appeared to be texting from the grave!
Monday 2nd June 2008
I sat on the settee opposite my dad, Frank, I felt useless. Just four days earlier, his wife Sadie, 69, had died of a heart attack. Since then, I'd been spending time with Dad, now 59, while my partner, David Osborne-James, 32, stayed at home with the kids, Mary, 11, and 9-year-old Jake.
The past four days had passed in a haze of tears and silence. The smell of Sadie's cigarette smoke still lingered, as if she was just about to pop her head round the door, smiling away like she always did. Only she didn't, of course.
And now, as our gaze stopped at her black handbag on the floor beside her chair, I couldn't help thinking about that day, two months earlier. The three of us had been sitting in the living room, when Sadie had delved into the bag, a glint in her eye.
'Look at this,' she'd grinned, holding up a mobile phone.
'Can't work out how to use the bloomin' thing properly,' she'd beamed. 'I've just about got the hang of sending texts, though.'
'Here's one she sent me earlier,' Dad had said, rolling his eyes and grabbing his mobile: Teaswaitingnow
'You just need to master the art of using the space button now,' I'd laughed.
'Fat chance,' Sadie had sniggered. 'Writing that was a miracle.'
From then on, she and that phone had been inseparable. And one thing was always the same — her messages never had any spaces between the words.
But now, Dad's eyes welled up as he picked up Sadie's bag, with her mobile inside.
'I want to take this to her,' he said, his voice a croak.
'I'll come with you,' I said. Dad held Sadie's bag on his lap, as I drove us to JT Byrne Funeral Directors in town. We went into a back room, where she lay in her coffin, dressed in a lilac dress. I choked back the tears as Dad placed the bag in with her.
'Here you are, love,' he whispered. 'You're going to need this. It's got your phone in.'
Don't get me wrong, I thought it was weird. I'd heard of people being buried with their favourite teddy, but a phone? ? But even that couldn't stop us sobbing uncontrollably when, a week later, we held Sadie's funeral at Wignall Memorial Methodist Church, where she and Dad had got married two years earlier, in September 2001. For the next fortnight, I hardly left Dad's. Sadie's dressing gown still hung on the bathroom door, a half-empty pack of her cigarette papers lay on the table. And when my new mobile arrived later that month, even that reminded Dad of her.
'She'd have loved the look of that,' he sighed.
The following day, I grabbed my phone and headed over to Dad's. When I got to his front door, I glanced down at it. It hadn't beeped, but I had a message.
Sue.dad.fags
I scrolled down to see who it was from. Nothing. A blank space.
'That's strange,' I said, showing it to Dad.
'I wonder who sent it,' he said.
'No idea,' I shrugged.
'The only Sue I know is Sadie's daughter.'
But things got even weirder when, a couple of hours later, I picked up my phone and there was another message. B*****dcounciljustgotback
'Look Dad,' I gasped.
'Do you think Sadie's trying to get in touch?' he asked.
'Hardly,' I insisted.
I knew Dad was grieving, but I wasn't going to let his mind go into overdrive. The message had really freaked him out, though.
'Let's take it to my mate, Bill Loughran,' Dad said. 'He knows about the supernatural.'
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
What if Bill thought we'd both gone mad? But Dad wouldn't back down and,
10 minutes later, we were sitting in Bill's kitchen at his house in Thornton.
I wasn't the only one who thought it was ridiculous.
'You're just imagining things,' Bill said. 'It's obviously a wrong number.'
At that moment, the phone beeped with another text.
Baby.sixweeks.uniform.eternity
Suddenly, it all seemed too much of a coincidence.
The way the text had no spaces. The fact that Sadie's daughter, Emma
Ellis, 27, was expecting a baby in six weeks' time, and that I'd just bought Jake his new school uniform…
'I bought Sadie an eternity ring just before she died,' Dad whispered.
'What the…?' Bill gasped.
'This is freaking me out.'
He wasn't the only one.
Deep down, I knew there must be a rational explanation. After all, dead people can't send texts. But if the messages weren't from Sadie, who were they from? Weirder still, an extra £25 credit had been added to my phone.
By now, even I was starting to wonder.
'Perhaps it was Sadie,' I told Dad.
'That phone's a miracle, isn't it?' he smiled.
Sadly though, the miracle came to an abrupt end two days later, when I was doing the washing up, and David knocked it into the bowl.
'I can't believe it,' I ranted.
'It's only a phone,' he protested.
'But it was Dad's only link to Sadie,' I explained.
Heart racing, I went to break the bad news to Dad.His face crumpled. At that moment, his house phone started ringing. I answered it and, quite clearly, an automated voice said: 'Goodbye.'
Then the line went dead.
'Who was that?' Dad asked.
'I don't know,' I said, clutching the receiver in shock. 'But the voice said goodbye.'
Dad sat down on the settee.
'Goodbye, love,' he whispered.
I've got a new mobile now, but I haven't had any more weird messages. Sometimes, I think I should have contacted O2 to try to get to the bottom of who those texts were from, but what's the point? I've come round to the idea they were from Sadie. Some spirits contact their loved-ones through mediums or as ghosts, so I suppose it makes sense that Sadie used her mobile. It just goes to show, even spirits move with the times!