Voice is quite important, right? Both your inner voice and the sound of your voice. It’s important. It’s part of who you are and what makes you, you.
I’ve always been quite partial to a good voice, like say Alan Rickman’s or Eddie Vedder’s. Or my Mum’s deep timbre. And my Dad’s laughter and forever dad voice. Except that it wasn’t forever.
My Dad lost his voices. His inner voice is lost inside him, at times struggling to come out, more often than not just hiding there where we cannot see it, powerful in its absence, oh so very powerful for its absence.
His sound voice, the one that used to leave me the exact same voicemails regardless of subject, the one I would recognise everywhere since forever (always this word, in all its lying might!), that one. That one is gone.
He calls me now, almost daily, mostly unsure of why. My heart tries to fill the gaps of reason with the stories of that deep love one feels for one’s children that give meaning to the meaningless conversations we engage in.
Every so often, so rarely I dare not expect it, I can almost touch his inner voice, much like when it used to hug me on dark days. He’ll tell me he’s sad and we will both know that for that moment, however fleeting, he knows.
What is left of us when we live for those golden moments of shared sadness, because at least we are both fully there?
