TreeHouseView

I don’t remember when I first realized that I couldn’t remember my mom’s voice. She died in 1993 and I was only 22, so nearly 32 years later this might not seem unusual, but I know that at some point I had an A-Ha moment that I could have done without where I shockingly realized that I could no longer “hear” her, listen as I might. I also know that while I can’t hear my mom’s voice, I will still hear her for the rest of my life.

It’s interwoven into my being–I’ve tried to unstitch it. I’ve tried to unsing the lyrics, to unweave that silvery thread of the song that floats between us in a dance that stretches taut and tense yet won’t fucking break no matter how much I pull and yank to try and remove myself from her unending and overbearing lead. I’ve never been a good dance partner.

Try as I might, though…I can’t hear her voice. I don’t know anymore what she actually sounded like, and the sadness that settles over me with that realization is just too much. Probably my second oldest brother John has some video from some long forgotten family get-together that recorded my mom speaking and if I really wanted to, I could hear her again but that would require me having to ask my brother for something and that’s a fate worse to me than continuing to not be able to remember her voice. (If there’s a sibling related prompt, I’ve got a doozy of an entry coming up.)

So I live on with the outragerously funny memory (to me) of her trying to sing and butchering it but not being able to recall how she sounded, except I know it was terrible. She was a music teacher, but could not sing, though that did not deter the warble. She gave it her all. And if she is able to criticize or admonish me from the grave, she is absolutely spending all of her time six feet under occupied with those same things that kept her busy topside.

While I would love to shake myself loose from the many, many Mommy issues that thread through the loom of my life, I would trade those for the chance to hear her voice again. Just a note, a stanza from her song would suffice…sometimes I think I can hear it. Her voice is just there…right there on the edge of where I can almost hear it but not quite.

If only she would sing a bit louder.