"The Importance of Voice"

There is a videotape we made in June 1990 when my parents were evacuated from Liberia, the home of their hearts. In the gymnasium of the school from which my siblings and I had graduated, my parents waited for transport. As they waited, they were interviewed by American television news journalists. My husband and I went from channel to channel, until we began hearing the same phrases repeated, to capture image and voice.

This videotape reduces me to tears because I hear sorrow and hope in their voices, and a sense of immeasurable loss.

My dad died last month and I realized that even though I have a multitude of photographs of him, except for this very short video, I will not hear his voice again in my lifetime. The enormity of that loss is staggering. I heard that voice almost everyday for 17 years, and then in fits and starts dictated by his furloughs or time in the U.S. for medical needs. When they (finally) retired in Louisville, where I live, I had the luxury of being able to pick up the telephone and hear his voice when I wanted or needed to—provided I called before 10 PM; no, make that 9 PM, because he went to bed early.

I knew that voice well. In my infancy, he read and sang to me in the vain hope of lulling me to sleep. As a child, I thought he yelled at me too much, but that was preferable to those lectures that began, “I’m very disappointed with you.” Those lectures always hurt more because I had not just done something wrong, I had disappointed my dad. He and I fussed at each other my entire life, but loved each other fiercely and sometimes told that to each other. Odds are that I talked too much when sometimes if I had listened, we might have strengthened our connection. I miss his voice because it was home, and when I needed the voice, or the safety behind it, it was there.

There are other voices now absent from my life. Some are gone forever, some are forgotten, and some are very far away in distance and in practice. Two days after dad died, I answered my phone and heard a much-loved voice. “Lydia, where are you?” was my question, and when she responded, “Japan,” I remembered the power of a friend’s voice to comfort over miles and time. Other voices have come from Colorado and Georgia, California and North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio…

I love getting what I call “real mail,” and I am learning to love e-mail as well. But I realize that while I’m reading the words, I’m reaching back in memory to hear the voice behind the words. Before humans had a written language, there was the voice. Even now, I will phone friends just to hear a familiar voice. My own history remains oral—my friends and family all have stories; some flattering, some not, some funny, some sad. Even people who never liked me are free to voice my story.

In the midst of Advent, the Voice remains and sustains from the beginning of time. In times like this, of sadness and bereavement, I have to strain even harder to hear the voice of One who spoke us into being. So I listen to the music, and the liturgy. I phone friends who have spoken Love to me. And maybe, maybe, I will watch a few minutes of a videotape to remember Dad, knowing his voice is not lost to me forever.