The Battery’s Last Ring

In the autumn of 2012, my grandmother, Elara, was fading fast. My mother and I flew from Auckland to the small town of Wairoa, where she lived in a modest council flat. The air smelled of damp earth and salt from the nearby river, and the town itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for her departure.

Elara passed away the night after we arrived, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. We decided, as she had wished, to have an open casket in her living room. The flat was small, so the coffin took center stage, and the rest of us—the cousins, my siblings, and I—slept on mattresses and sleeping bags around it, the air thick with the scent of lilies and candle wax.

On Friday night, to lift the gloom, someone turned on the television. A rerun of a comedy show filled the room with laughter. We were all huddled together, trying to find a moment of joy, when a sharp, insistent ringing shattered the tension. It came from the kitchen.

Everyone froze. ‘What’s that?’ my cousin Mia asked. I volunteered to investigate, my heart thumping. In the kitchen, I found the source: Elara’s old cellphone, lying in a drawer. It was dead—the battery had been flat for weeks. I pulled it out, pried off the back, and removed the battery, setting both on the counter. The ringing stopped.

A few minutes later, the ringing began again, clearer this time. I went back, and the phone was on the counter, battery still out, ringtone blaring. As I stared, the screen flickered to life, displaying a single word: ‘Mum.’ I called my mother in, and she saw it too. She picked up the battery, tried to put it back in, but it wouldn’t fit. The phone rang until she pressed the answer button. A static-laced voice, barely audible, whispered my mother’s childhood nickname. The line went dead.

We tried to rationalize it—maybe a prank, a faulty phone. But the phone was off, and no one had touched it. That night, we went to bed in the living room, the coffin a silent sentinel. At 3:30 AM, all of us were awakened by a loud, rhythmic thumping from the kitchen. I crept in, flashlight in hand. The phone was on the floor, screen glowing with a message: ‘Let me out.’ The battery was nowhere to be found.

Then we heard a voice from the coffin. Not a moan, but a clear, elderly woman’s voice, singing a lullaby she used to sing to us as children. We all stood in the dark, hair on end, as the singing filled the room. My mother, trembling, knelt by the coffin. ‘Mum, are you there?’ The singing stopped. A faint whisper answered: ‘Just checking on you.’

We stayed up till dawn, huddled together, whispering prayers. When morning came, we opened the coffin to check her, and she looked peaceful, her hands folded. But on her chest lay a single, black lily—a flower none of us had brought. And the cellphone was in her hands, the battery back in, with only one bar of charge, showing a call log that listed ‘Mum’ as the last caller, at 2:29 AM.

We never spoke of that night again, but every year on the anniversary, that off-brand cellphone rings, always at the same time, with the same message on the screen: ‘I’m still here.’ We never answer it, but we have agreed to keep the battery in forever, just in case she needs to reach us one last time.