Deafening Silence

This past Sunday, I went to the Worship Service at Dunbar Elementary School to in part celebrate my mother and in part to represent the Texarkana Museums System which was commissioned by Texarkana Independent School District to create/recreate an archive documenting the history of Dunbar School when it was an African American School during segregation in Texarkana.

Several of the Dunbar alumni performed in the Dunbar Reunion Choir and I have to admit, I have always been moved by a children's choir or a church choir.  The sound of these women and men signing from their hearts in the tiny gymnasium across the street from my grandmother's home where I spent many, many a weekend and summer cleaning kitchen cabinets, watching soap operas with my Aunt Maxine and sometimes - but of course not often - getting into trouble with my Cousin Kevin, quickly moved me to tears.  I don't grieve over losing my mother any longer, but I miss her presence in my life every single moment.  I keep it at bay.

But I heard those voices and I was back in my grandmother's den, on one of many Christmas Day's and I could see my aunts and uncle singing old songs, dancing and swaying and laughing.

But I could not for the life of me hear my mother's voice singing solo.  I tried.  I tried to silence the beauty I was hearing surround me and focus on what her voice sounded like just under six years ago. I could remember the song - Gnarls Barkley's Crazy with Cee Lo Green.  It was something my mom had heard and fixated on as she was sick and surrounded by myself , my dad, her sisters, her baby brother and all her friends that were more family than friend for those last four months.  Or Evita - which since 4th grade or so, has been the song I could hear my mother sing out.  Creating a fixation with that song for me that just never sits well with my love of Duran Duran, Abba and Quiet Riot.  That summer in 2008, we would eat and laugh and listen to music and share stories in my parents' living room.  The same living room that had become the Christmas Day tradition after my grandmother passed away in the early 1990's. The constant competitions to be named the Haywood with the best voice.

I can hear my mom talking to us.  Telling us that while she wouldn't want to go through those four months again - she wouldn't trade them for the world.  Letting me know she wanted to at least "lay eyes on me" every day and telling me I had nice legs.  Telling my 15 year old son how proud she was he would be a pallbearer at her sister's funeral just a month before she would leave us herself.  But I can't hear her sing. It's like a radio station I just can't tune in or a seashell being held up to my ears.  Maybe I'll have a moment, one day soon I hope, where it's quiet and it all falls back into place.