The Sound of a Voice……..

We all know the sound of ones voice it is a constant sound running through our own mind. We know the sound of our loved ones who are around us daily, we learn how to read their emotions by the sound of their voice. What I have learned in my grief process is the fear of forgetting what they sound like. Yet what I have come to find is that you may not constantly remember what they sounded like but you do remember the emotion and thus the sound of their spirit. I am lucky, my husband was a musician, and a performer. We have many recordings of him, both professional and just him singing around the house with the kids. Yet it is not him singing that I remember most it is his excitement in teasing the kids. Of them and him having inside jokes that they constantly teased each other with. The laughing and watching silly videos together each trying to out do the other to make everyone laugh. I have learned that there is so much emotion tied to those memories that I no longer worry about forgetting them.

We all do this, think of your favorite song. I mean the one that you play over and over again. We have many songs like this. The one you play when you are sad, the one you play when you need motivation, the one you play when you are in love. You know these songs by heart, the first few notes all the way through to the end. If you close your eyes you can hear the sound of the singer then you can see the things that were happening in your life at the time that the song became attached to you, or you to it.

What I have learned is this, stop worrying about forgetting and just let the memories flood over you. You will never forget the love that you have for that person. It is the emotion that helps us remember. Their warmth, their laugh, the comfort you got from being next to them. We remember those things, the sounds of them follow. It is when we remember them and we let those memories linger instead of pushing them away that we get the feeling of them being near. The sense of them being close by is because we open ourselves up to letting their memory be constant. At first this was hard for me. The pain of losing him was all too much the constant reminder that no new memories would ever be made. It is a crushing blow. Yet I was wrong, new memories can still be made, they are just different. He is still with me, and my children, his spirit. It is the way we choose to keep him with us. So even though he is not physically with us, we carry his memory everywhere. On our trips, to special events, in our daily activities, we talk about him. We talk about what he did or didn’t like, we talk about the things that would have made him laugh, or even cry. We know that the time we are living in now he would have been our hero. He would keep us laughing, he would keep our spirits up, he would find incredible things for us to do to keep us from constantly worrying about getting sick or not. So now we do that, we find things to keep us busy. We find projects to take our mind off of the worry, and focus on what we can do. We have joined community projects for the little kids. Placing a teddy bear or making Easter eggs to place in our windows for the little ones to hunt. It is these things that help us feel like we are making a difference. We are praying for those on the front lines, for a cure, for God to move his hand and a miracle to happen and the disease just disappear. We are praying for you, that you stay safe and stay well.

It is what Ed would have told us to do. To stop thinking of ourselves and put others first. It is what he would have done. We pray for those families who are losing loved ones and cannot gather to mourn. We know the value of that, of being able to be hugged by loved ones when we are hurting so bad. We know all too well and we can’t even imagine being in your shoes. Please if you need someone to talk to my email is on my page. Write me, I am an ear and while I cannot physically hug you I can pray for you. That sometimes is exactly what we need. Someone to stand in the gap and pray for us because we just don’t have the words to even say, because getting “oh father” out can be difficult when we are dealing with loss.

The sound of a voice is something so special, and the loss of that voice is devastating to its loved ones. Yet take heart in knowing that there is so much more to the sound of the voice. And when you truly love someone you will not forget it. Because in the sound of their voice is their spirit, and that is something that only dies if you let it. Don’t get me wrong, you will miss their sound, their spirit, but you will never forget it.

-Dee