nothing left unsaid
I recently did one of those weird things you eventually get around to doing after someone dies. I changed some of the entries in my phone book. I’m not the type of person who can just cross someone out. I mean, in regards to the phone book, if someone moves, that’s one thing, the entry is still there. But to cross someone off because they died, that I can’t do. I have to rewrite the whole page. No longer do I have a listing for Mom and Dad. It’s just Dad, Mom is gone. Her cell phone number is gone. Her voice on voicemail, recorded when her speech was unimpaired and still pretty strong, dissolved into ether.
When my Auntie Jan died, it was a while before my cousin got around to disconnecting her telephone and voicemail. My aunt died suddenly on 23 December, food for Christmas brunch in the fridge, presents organized and labeled by name, but not wrapped. So many things of her life filling the house, but not her life, not her. There were so many times when I wanted to call her number, just to hear her on the voicemail. Auntie Jan would have called me creepy and weird, I’m totally okay with that. At least she’d have been there to make fun of me, that would have been better than having her ripped so suddenly from our lives. Her voice remained though, somewhere, out there in the digital age.
It’s not so much their voice that I want to hear, it’s the message. There was a pause on my aunt’s voicemail between “You’ve reached the —- residence” and “we’re not here right now”. You could hear Auntie Jan thinking of what she was going to say next. That short silence, that stumble in the thought process, that feeling of knowing how it will sound on the recording. That’s what I miss. She was gone, but there was this imprint of her humanity that lingered, who wouldn’t be tempted to hear that one last time. Auntie Jan’s cosmic voice is calling me a stup - “stoop” a family name for stupid - even as I write this.
It was that Christmas that my Mom’s voice started to change. It was so easily dismissed as stress or sickness that none of us really paid much attention to it. Looking back, it was just one of many in a long line of symptoms she had from the disease that eventually took her life. We didn’t know that then. I thought she was just run down from the Holiday’s. We spent so much time sobbing over those few days, everyone’s voice sufered. Auntie Jan’s death was sudden and painful - Christmas was her favorite.
Mom lost her voice gradually, over years. By the time I convinced her to see an Ears Nose and Throat specialist, the damage was permanent and they were baffled. There was no aparent reason for it. That made it worse. My Mom had this habit of calling me, just because….just to say hi. She had nothing to say, but she called anyway, and at the time it bugged the crap out of me. But now I miss it. I wish I could fully remember what she sounded like then, clear and strong. There were times during the last year that I had with her, that she would call and actually have something to say and for the life of me I couldn’t understand her. That bothered me too. I’d try so hard to listen - to hear her - to understand her words - and when I couldn’t I’d get frustrated. I’d think it was her fault. She knew she had trouble speaking, why didn’t she just slow down? “Mom, call me back when you can talk better.” Thankfully, she never took me to heart, if she had I’d have never heard from her again. She always called me back - a little stronger, a little louder, but it was temporary.
When Mom’s last days were upon us, strangely she seemed to speak more clearly. Then it was gone, her speech was gone. Her muscles had atrophied as well, so her ability to communicate was extremely limited. Shortly after my Mom was diagnosed, she and my Dad signed Health Care Directives. She had told me personally, and expressed in her directive that if she lost the ability to speak or communicate with loved ones, she did not want to be kept alive. Sadly that time came too soon. She was already in the hospital receiving hospice care when she lost all ability to communicate. One of the last things she said, or rather mouthed was “Vivian”, my daughter. After that he lips would move, but we couldn’t tell what words she was trying to form. There was no voice, no air behind her words.
I sobbed on her hard shoulder, frozen in time and pain, “I know you’re trying Mom, I can see it, but we can’t hear you or understand you anymore. I’m so sorry.” And I desperately wished that she’d be able to raise her arm and put it around me, or lift her hand and put it in my hair to let me know that it was okay. But she was trapped, nothing about her body worked anymore. When my tears subsided and I sat up to look at her, she was peaceful. The constant look of pain was gone, and I felt her trying to get her energy across to me - to comfort me.
I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. I see now what a wonderful thing that was. Don’t get me wrong, we’d had our Mother/Daughter moments good and bad. I’d caused her pain by simply being a teenager and she’d thoroughly embarassed me by simply being my Mom. I’d leave her short, hidden notes and she never let me pay for anything. She’d call to tell me she was just going to stop by, I’d make tea and then we’d end up cleaning out a closet. She wore pink the day my daughter was born convinced I was having a girl. I would have bet money I was having a boy, but she told me a hundred time I was wrong, it was a girl. She was right. She always like it when I realized and admitted her brilliance. And those phone calls with nothing to say - that went both ways. My Mom and I talked to each other at least three times a day. If it was less then that, things didn’t feel right. There was nothing left unsaid between us, we’d taken advantage of what time we had.
In her final, wakeful hours, since there was nothing left unsaid, I started making things up…”Why yes, I have lost weight”, “I know, I think I’m smart and beautiful too.” These faint attempts at humor were temporary and I just told her I loved her and that I knew she loved me too. She loved me more than I’ll ever know, probably something close to the love that I have for my daughter. She always let me know how proud she was to be my Mom, how much she loved being my Mom.
I never doubted her, well that’s not true: see aforementioned teenage years. What I should have said was I never doubted my relationship with her. I never doubted us. I meant the world to her and she meant the world to me, and we knew that. So there really was nothing left to say except I Love You. But we didn’t even need that - it was understood - it was felt. She left me with full knowledge of her endless love, kindness and generosity. That can’t be deleted or crossed out. In that negative space of silence, that pause, that’s where her message is, in the unspoken.