How Long Do You Remember Voices?

[mrdreamjeans]

This post isn't intended to be morbid, but one of curiosity and purpose. cimarrondfw has a fascinating family history. His stories are steeped in small-town Texas and often make me contemplate my own family's background. His live journal entry today reminded me of a project I haven't completed. With Dad's medical woes last year, particularly the stroke that targeted short-term memory, I put a project on the back burner. I intend to record my mother and father's voices telling legendary (to us) family stories and events. I almost lost the opportunity.

For years after my best friend Dora died, I had a copy of her voice mail tape. I could hear her voice at my leisure. I no longer know where it is. My Grandma Fritts was a key figure in my childhood. I am losing what she sounded like. Both women had distinctive voices and I'm losing them. Not the memories. The memories are still vibrant, but I'm forgetting how they sounded. I miss them.

Be it my age, or what I've been through in the past 15 months. Be it my nature to want to remember and document. Be it a decision of emotional need. I want to retain the voices of those people that I've loved (love) long after they are gone from my life. The faces of Dora, my relatives and other friends who have died are clear in my memory. Some of the voices (the cadences, idiosyncratic voice patterns, tone, pitch, the sound of their laugh) are still with me. But for how long? I am just barely holding on to Grandma's voice ... gone 33 years ... and Dora's ... gone 10 years.

My voice will live on in recordings, as will many of my singer friends. But, I'm curious and so I ask these open questions: Do you remember the voices of your loved ones after they are gone? For how long? How do you hang on to something so key to who they were, yet so ephemeral? Do you have their voices captured for posterity? I better get busy and make those tapes.