On Mother’s Day 2024, my phone started buzzing nonstop — the way it only does when there is an emergency. I glanced down at its screen and it felt like every person I knew was racing to be the first to tell me something.
When I began opening the messages, I discovered they were all the same: a screenshot of a public Facebook post from someone I didn’t know. It was written by a local mom who had had an encounter with my 16-year-old nephew.
“To the mom of the boy who borrowed his uncle’s car for prom yesterday...” the post from the stranger began.
My chest tightened. The woman who wrote the post didn’t know that “the mom of the boy” — my sister Kim — would never see that message.
She was dead.
