I remember the adults at the after-wake playing a tape recording of my dead father as he told stories. All the drunk people listening to the tape were laughing. I didn’t understand then that they were laughing because they were sad. It was right there. His voice. If I try really hard, I can catch bits of it at the tops of my ears, but then they blink away.

After my mother died, I kept a voicemail from her on my phone for a long time. My husband tried to save it for me but now it’s long gone, too. Then I saw her in a video from years and years before, walking, alive, and there was her voice. Her voice. I never wanted to let go but the tape began unraveling and was lost.

The smell lingers on clothing, in bedding. This is probably what you first knew of the people who cared for you when you were newly born, their smell. Their voices were more muffled to your new ears. You were used to listening through fluid, through skin. Your eyes unfocused. You knew them by the scent that is so unmistakably their own. That scent that you only notice in their absence. A puff of smoke, like magic. My mother has been dead for fourteen years and I still have a scarf of hers that I take out and smell every once in a while if I am feeling like I must. It is a small torture. I am that baby again, reaching up to her. Continue reading →