Jokes are meant to be light and funny, but for them to manifest a morbid reality? That is not much heard of but it was the case with Maureen Branigan and her mother, Debbie.
The women spent the whole day together, and Debbie lived only three blocks away, so by the end of the day, got in her car and headed off to her home, but there was a twist to the tale.
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How they spent their day
On January 31, 2021, the mother, 52, and her daughter, now 30, went grocery shopping to pick up ingredients for making beef stew for dinner. They then cuddled on the sofa while idly watching TV.
When night approached, and as a storm was rolling in, Debbie called it a night and went for her car to drive back to her house, which was three blocks away and in Philadelphia, as well.
Debbie had health issues
Maureen revealed to People that her mother had type II diabetes and kidney disease. However, on the day Maureen was with her mother, she was doing well health-wise, which hadn’t prepared Maureen for what she was about to face.
Maureen had a dark sense of humor
Since Debbie would often joke about how she’d slip and “break her neck” whenever it snowed, Maureen thought it would be a funny way to ask if she made it home by saying: “Did u make it home alive lol?”
And this was the last thing said between them.
Maureen thought nothing of it
Maureen was used to her mother going back home and straight into sleep. She’d always FaceTime her and plan the day with her the following day since they spent every day together. It wasn’t until the night of the following day that she was hit with reality.
Debbie never made it home
It was when Maureen’s fiancé went out to walk his dog the next night that he was shocked to find Debbie and her car were still parked outside, with an ambulance beside them.
When he went inside to tell his fiancée, she remembers “not flinching.”
Maureen was still in shock
“Immediately, I called my dad, who was at home. I told him he had to get here, and fast. At this point, we still had no idea what was going on. The medics couldn’t tell us anything, and we were stuck in limbo,” she recalled to People.
They rushed to the hospital
“Once my dad ran over, I think reality started to set in. Since the car was still parked out front, we hopped in it and followed the ambulance to the hospital, which was just a three-minute drive,” she continued.
She got the answer to her question the hard way
“We didn’t speak much during that car ride. Looking back, I think we both knew what truth we were about to walk into,” she added.
What they walked into was the death of her mother from a cardiac arrest. Her and her mother’s morbid jokes fired back at her, she never made it home alive, sadly.
She never thought that her text would have this impact
“When I sent that text, never in my wildest imagination would I have thought it would result in her dying. Honestly, it wasn’t the first time I had texted her something along those lines, and it wasn’t the first time she had texted me like that, either,” she told the outlet.
They were best friends
“I’m an only child, so we were absolute best friends. Anyone who knows us could tell you we were together every single day,” she said.
Almost four years later, she shared her story on TikTok, which went viral, and turns out, she wasn’t alone. Several commenters had gone through a similar situation.
