"The Call I Never Answered"

M Mehran

It came at 2:13 AM, on a Tuesday, in the middle of the kind of sleep that feels like falling. My phone buzzed once, then twice, rattling on the nightstand like a warning. I blinked at the screen, blurry-eyed and irritated.

"Mom."

That was unusual. My mother hated calling late. She believed it was an invitation for bad news. If she ever needed me, it was always a text. Brief, polite, and oddly punctuated, like “Call me. Please.”

But I didn’t pick up.

I silenced the phone, turned over, and told myself it could wait until morning.

It didn’t.


---

The next day, I stared at the missed call icon like it had grown fangs. There was a voicemail. I didn’t listen. Instead, I called back. No answer.

I tried again. And again.

It was my dad who finally picked up, hours later. His voice sounded hollow, like he was speaking through a wind tunnel.

“Your mom collapsed last night. Massive stroke. She’s in ICU.”

The world shrank in that moment. Everything else—work, deadlines, rent, even my own name—became background noise.


---

By the time I got to the hospital, she was already gone.

One day alive. The next day not.

I stood there in the sterile white of the hospital room, listening to machines that no longer had any purpose, staring at the outline of a life that had disappeared while I slept.

And my phone kept buzzing. Condolences. Work emails. A “Don’t forget to hydrate!” notification from a fitness app.

I didn't cry.

Not then.

Not until a week later, when I finally listened to the voicemail.


---

“Hi, sweetheart… I know it’s late, I’m sorry. I just… I had a weird dream and wanted to hear your voice. That’s silly, right? You’re probably asleep. Anyway, I love you. That’s all. No need to call me back. Just… love you. Goodnight.”

That was it.

Her voice, warm and tired. No hint of what was coming. Just a dream and a mother’s instinct to reach out, one last time.


---

Grief is a strange thing. People think it’s loud, all screaming and tears and broken plates. But mostly, it’s quiet. It’s forgetting someone’s gone and reaching for the phone. It’s hearing a song they loved in a coffee shop and suddenly forgetting how to breathe.

I started seeing her everywhere. In strangers’ faces, in clouds, in lines from books she never read. And I began to wonder: what if I had answered that call?

What if she had heard my voice in that moment of fear or clarity or whatever made her dial?

What if my “Hi, Mom” had bought her ten more minutes? Or just made her smile before she left?


---

I told myself a thousand stories.

In one, I answered, and she laughed, and we talked about her dream.

In another, I called 911, and they saved her just in time.

And in another, the most painful of all, I answered, and it changed nothing—but at least she didn’t feel alone.


---

People love to say, “She knew you loved her.” But that’s not the point, is it?

The point is she called, and I didn’t pick up.

I forgave myself eventually. Sort of. Life moves forward, even when we don’t feel ready. The seasons change. New messages fill the inbox. You learn to carry the absence like a second skin.

And yet, some nights, when the world goes still and the phone lights up for no reason at all, I wonder if she’s still trying to reach me.

Maybe in dreams. Maybe in memory.

Or maybe in those moments when we’re closest to silence, when the noise of everything else fades.


---

There’s a lesson in this, I think. Or maybe just a reminder:

Answer the call.

Not just from your mother, but from life. From people who love you but are too afraid to say it directly. From the gut feeling that tells you to reach out. From the silence that asks to be filled.

Answer, even if you're tired. Even if it feels small. Especially then.

Because sometimes, that call is the last one.

And sometimes, silence is the loudest regret of all.