The Last Pebble

Pebbling: the act of giving small, thoughtful objects or gestures to show affection and strengthen social bonds, inspired by penguin courtship behavior. Pebbling is also recognized as a unique autistic love language. It emphasizes thoughtfulness, emotional reciprocity, and connection rather than material value.

Physical pebbling: giving a flower, coin, small toy, handwritten note, or other small trinket that carries personal meaning.

Digital pebbling: sending a meme, video clip, social media post, or photo to show someone you are thinking of them.

He sent her a couple of pebbles each day. Instagram reels or photos mostly. Just a few items to let her know he was thinking of her. His unspoken thought: “Here, I think you might like this.” These usually offered no explanation. Nor did they require one. She knew they were bits and pieces of his love. What was a father to do after his daughter was married with a life of her own?

The pebbles cost nothing but a little time. Sometimes she reacted with a thumbs up here or an LOL there. And she missed them when he didn’t get around to sending them. So, he kept up the tradition because he did think of her often and somehow wanted her to keep feeling like she was still his little girl, although her life was far beyond that. Grown-up professional women don’t need pebbles. Perhaps only dads need them.

There were thousands of pebbles. She lost count as time passed. Heart-warming animal videos. Sarcastic cartoons. Political memes. Articles with amazing facts. Eye-catching photos, or whole photo collections. Ads for things that no longer exist, or things that cost way too much, even for a successful professional woman. She joked about them. And replied with memes and reels she thought he might like. But she never complained or told him to stop. After all, digital pebbles don’t take any physical space.

They both knew that someday the pebbles would end. Age or death would put a stop to it. At that point, there would be no more pebbles, just the memory of the thoughts and affection represented by all the little gestures. It was easier to send a pebble than to say, “I love you,” or “I’m proud of you.” He thought he was showing her how he felt, and just maybe on some level she understood.

Then, he died. Not much warning. No long illness. Just a combination of age and conditions he thought he and his doctors had “a pretty good handle on.”

There was no more pebbling. For a while.

A few days after the memorial service, she got a cartoon. It was a of a man playing trumpet in heaven, surrounded by angels, standing on a cloud, holding the instrument like her father did, with the caption, “Lots of work here for us trumpet players.”

Her first thought was, “Who sent this?” But the phone number was his. It was as if he sent a text message from beyond the grave.

The next day, she got a plain text message: “All is well. Don’t worry about me.”

“OK…this is creepy,” she thought.

The day after that, another message arrived: “It’s really me. Thanks for the nice memorial.”

“This is getting weird.” She called customer service. The number was no longer in service. As dead as he was. There were no messages sent from it. Someone must be spoofing the old number to prank her. So, she brought the phone in to show them. There was a lot of head scratching and mumbling. In the end, there was no definitive explanation.

The pebbles continued for two weeks. One-a-day. They matched her dad’s taste and humor. He sent new video clips of admired dead musicians he’d met. And one of him playing along with a few of them. There were new quotes from dead authors who he finally got to “shake hands with.” There were a couple of photos with the caption, “Here, you don’t need a camera. All you need to do is see something, think about it, and use your mind to take a picture.”

She cried when she saw the message about reuniting with the family dogs. The photo looked real. Nobody could prove it was AI. There they all were, posing for the “camera” looking eternally young. He wrote, “If you think they look good, you should see me. But I’m not allowed to send that pic.”

She wondered why. She remembered a line from Coleridge, “It had been strange, even in a dream…” Yet it was happening – only to her. No one else got any pebbles. Not even her mom or her brother.

Speaking of her rationalist brother – he was at a loss to explain any of this. No investigation led to a real number or source, but the messages had to come from somewhere. He suggested another dimension, or perhaps another timeline, or even another universe. He couldn’t bring himself to say, “heaven.” Could heaven simply be another universe where the rules of death, subscriptions, and taxes don’t work like they do here? He also couldn’t say, “God only knows,” but he was beginning to think it.

Her mother was beginning to feel hurt that she hadn’t received a meme or cartoon. She asked, “Why not me? I was married to him for over 50 years. You’d think I would get something from him.”

That same day a message arrived: “Tell your mom not to worry. I still love her. As much as ever. I don’t know why I can only send pebbles to you. But that’s the rules.”

The following day she received this message: “Tell everybody. You will all need to wait a while longer. Life will be worth it…to be where I am now. You will love it here.”

This was the last pebble.