Sound Anniversary

It’s been March 9th all day.  I was confused for most of it.  The date felt weighted, but I couldn’t remember why.  For a brain like mine, particularly hinged to all things calendar, it was especially confusing. 

It hit me during first grade music, my last class of the school day.  A flash reel of memories appeared in front of my face.  The winding entrance to the parking garage at UVA Hospital in Charlottesville.  March 9, 2001.  The elevator with me, a nurse wearing blue gloves that almost matched her scrubs, and my dad in a wheelchair - my hands on its U-shaped handles, awkwardly turning it diagonally to accommodate the shrinking elevator space.  

We were riding up to the surgical floor.  A team of surgeons would spend 13 hours removing a tumor the size of a silver dollar from the back of my dad’s tongue.  This, according to the oncologists in Roanoke and their accompanying pamphlets, would give him six months to a year longer to live.  He was at stage IV cancer at the time of diagnosis, three and a half months prior.  My dad never questioned whether or not to go through with the complicated, hugely invasive surgery.  I sometimes wonder if he, or the other family members advocating for him, understood how to realistically weigh the pros and cons of the situation.  My dad seemed extremely confident that he could fight this, and that March 9th would simply be the first step of the battle. 

“You okay, little Angela?” he asked, a somewhat forced smile attempting to accompany the endearment of calling me little.  I was 23.  

I caught his eyes, the same color as mine.  The nurse bowed her head a bit further towards the chart in her hands.  

“Yeah, I’m good.  How are you?”  Resolution.  This is what is.

“I’m gonna be okay.  I’ll see you in a little while.”  

Those were the last words I ever heard my dad say, the last time he spoke my name.  He would never regain the ability to speak.  He died five months and four days later.  

I don’t think about it often, but I can remember the exact sound of his voice.  I can retrieve its timbre the same way I can pull the sound of a bass clarinet from a full orchestra.  It’s strange that I can remember it so well; he was very quiet, reserved, and often shy.  He could go hours without saying a word.  His approached life matter-of-fact.  No waxing or mincing words.  We never once had a long conversation.  There was no way to navigate all that wasn’t said.  

He would yell at the television from one foot away during football games.  

He was a painfully slow driver.  When someone would pass him - often zipping around him in angst - he would snark out a forceful “TAKE IT!” and then laugh, his right hand off the wheel long enough to slap his own knee.  

“I’m just resting my eyes,”  The later in the evening, the more defensive and whiny that phrase would sound. 

“How’s your mom?” he asked without fail during every visit.  

“You ready?” he would ask when it was time to leave my grandparents’ house.  This, after what seemed a tedious few minutes of small talk, my dad leaning against the door frame between the living room and kitchen, arms folded across his chest, watching me pack up my belongings from the day.  

“You don’t have to be there for the surgery.  Aunt Boots is coming and your Mom will be there too.  I hate you having to miss work.”  I was in the parking lot of Macaroni Grill on my cell phone, unaware that I was having the last ever private conversation with him, and unable to process what the recovery from such a surgery would translate to daily life. 

When he had to use paper and pencil to communicate, the tone of things was acutely missing.  A joke about a shotgun wedding had to be explained.  Having to plod through an explanation of a punchline is tedious in the first place - it’s much less worth it if you have to write it out.  A lot of intention and nuance is lost - a relationship already difficult to interpret made even more so.  

I don’t think about it often, but I can remember the exact sound of his voice. 

vocal sound waves