Sometimes, in my dreams, I talk to my mom.
I don’t remember which topics we touch upon, nor do I have any recollection of what we were doing, where we were, or why we were there in the first place. All I know is, when I wake up, I wish I hadn’t, and when I turn my head toward the wall, shut my eyes and try to fall back asleep to continue our discussion, she’s gone again.
There are many conversations I never got to have with my mom, and only near the end of her life did I even feel comfortable broaching my real emotions with her. At 16, I was still figuring myself out, and in many ways, I wasn’t ready to have adult conversations with her, or with anybody else for that matter.
I never asked her what music she loved; never heard many stories about her childhood; never really talked to her about love, relationships or death. Some days, I just want to know silly, little things that other people know about their parents. In the time I had with her, I never got to sort it all out.
My mom’s instinct wasn’t to share every little detail, and it wasn’t because she was insular, cold or withdrawn. It was simply because she’d much rather ask a person about their day than tell them about hers. Conversation is often a covert competition for airtime, and my mom never put up much of a fight. She would have made for an excellent interviewer, because she couldn’t have cared less that the person at the other end of the line knew how smart or witty or perceptive she was. She’d just dial, say hello, ask and listen.
I often think about her daily phone call routines, and I’ve surmised that when she died, the landline lost its most faithful user. She’d sit at the kitchen table, phone in hand, and dial the numbers of no fewer than 30 people she’d check in on. She knew every number by heart, and I spent much of my childhood sitting beside her and waiting for her to hang up. She’d put her finger up to say, “Just one more minute.”
When she went to the hospital, for treatment for leukemia, our house became quiet. The phone didn’t ring as much. Instead, people called her hospital line, or her cell-phone.
She wasn’t around when texting was common, and I’m grateful for that. I don’t know that five years after her death I’d be writing about her most-used emojis, abbreviations or the time she “K’d” me. When she talked on the phone, my mom’s voice—and not just the sound—came through clearly.
Before my mom went to the hospital, the longest I’d been away from her was three weeks at summer camp. I didn’t have a phone to call her with, so she’d send letters, and while other campers might have gotten cookies, comic books or candy in the mail, I wasn’t jealous at all.
My mom’s letters were inventive, not simply postcards purchased at a dollar store. She wrote with whatever she could find at the cottage; one day, I got a letter written in a spiral on a coffee filter. She’d send crosswords for me to try, and sports pages for me to pore over. When she went to Israel one year, she sent me a handwritten note from Jerusalem, written on stationery from a hotel she was staying at.
Her handwriting was unique, an all-caps font with A’s that looked like triangles. Today, if I find anything with her writing on it, I make sure to save it. I have the crossword book she almost finished in the hospital, and I debate whether she’d want me to step in and fill in the clues she couldn’t or didn’t. I have all her camp letters in a drawer, and I sometimes get teary-eyed when folding T-shirts out of the laundry and seeing “BEN W” written on the tags.
Once a person is gone, you cling to the fragments of them that remain: their writing, their clothing, their voice. And when I began to understand she might one day be gone, I decided to try to save her voice.
On days when I couldn’t make it to the hospital, I’d sit at my desk, open up my computer’s recording program, and click the red button before calling her and turning my phone’s volume as high as it could go.
My voice on those phone calls is nasally and high, a combination of embarrassment with my changing body and a desire to be a kid again. We talked about annoying teachers and coaches, tests and how she was feeling during chemotherapy.
In the conversations, it’s clear what my intentions are. This would be my treasure trove of her voice, and I tried to coax her into giving me as much motherly advice as possible so I could create an archive of wisdom for when I’d inevitably need it.
My physics teacher excused me from writing a test and she told me to not procrastinate or take the easy way out. She told me to be ready for school in the morning, and that me, my dad and my sister had to be tolerant of each other. I should take ownership for my behaviour. I shouldn’t worry too much about the girl who didn’t like me back. “She’s just being a teenage girl.” I shouldn’t let what was happening to my mom ruin my life, she told me over and over. No matter what, every phone call ended with her saying she loved me.
Those conversations were vital, and even if she was in pain, my mom never showed it.
A month before she died, on Sept. 30, I recorded a snippet of her conversation with a family friend. “It’s gorgeous outside,” she said. “Go sit outside, while you can. That’s my attitude.”
About three days after she died, my computer did too. In addition to losing her, I was about to lose her voice. I panicked, and my best friend drove me to the Apple store with a terabyte hard drive in tow. He reassured me the computer would survive, and soon, every single one of my files was on the drive. The employee wiped the computer clean, and then re-uploaded every file into a folder called “Ben’s Computer.”
We brought the computer back to my house and set it up. We heard the bing, and with it came hope that my phone calls were still there. When I clicked on the file “Mom February 27 2012” and heard her say hello, I lost control.
Five years later, I’ve only listened to the tracks a handful of times. I recorded them with intentions of preserving my mom’s voice, and without them, I’m afraid I might have already forgotten what it sounds like.
The conversations weren’t as deep as I wish they were, and dealt more with my problems than they probably should have. We spent more time talking about my soccer and basketball games and her hospital food than we did the meaning of life or things my mom wished she could have done.
But I realize we talked about the every day stuff because that’s what my mom had always done, and she listened because that’s all she ever wanted to do. Before my mom got sick, I hated talking on the phone; now, like her, I loved it, and I was clamouring to get to my room and dial 791-3357, a number I’ll never forget. I’ve called it since to see if it’s been reassigned, but I tend to chicken out before I find out.
In the background of one my last recorded calls with my mom, my dad yelled up from the main floor to tell me that dinner was ready.
“Just one more minute,” I told him.
WALDMANISM 