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How Could I Forget My Mother’s Voice?
And other thoughts on grief in the passage of time.
It’s almost been ten years since my mother passed away.
I keep circling that number — Ten? How can it be ten? I feel like I’ve barely moved an inch — but the truth of it digs down deep into my marrow when I focus on what I’ve lost in the time that has passed.
My mother’s voice is drowned in the ether, a ring to it that I can’t recall at ease — if at all — anymore. Smartphones were amping up to their heyday in the years leading up to her death, so I don’t have any recordings from long-ago voicemails or videos I might have saved if that had been an option.
All I have are pictures of her, static as they are, her smiles frozen in place for as long as the photographs persist in existing.
I look at that woman and feel like she’s a stranger now. I moved on from the moment she stood still in time, never inching forward or backward, forever locked in the files of someone else’s memory.
I try not to think about her, if I’m honest. Her life wasn’t a happy one, especially in the last four years of her life, and she never made it a secret how much she thought her marriage was a mistake.
