Her Voice in My Head

I grew up in this small town, and it is ingrained with my memories, and my mom is in most of those. The memories are  in the town the way my mom's voice in is my head. I hear her all the time, almost. She was my best friend from the time I was born. I knew her. Know her.

Tender things, advice, warnings. I remember things she said that take on a new meaning now and they play in new contexts like freshly spoken words. She's just everywhere. I've been going through her stuff at my parents' house, and missing her more than ever. With her voice in my head, how can it be that I can't pick up the phone and call her? I can listen to her voicemails, read her text-messages and e-mails, write on her Facebook wall, but I can't feel her warm hugs or see her face light up or hear her chipper voice. How is that? Still can't register, eight months later.

I leave work late today. It's a beautiful day, a relief after the snow. I don't want to go home yet and settle in. So much packing to do.

Let's go to the park and walk down to the lake, just for a minute

is what she says in my head. 

I'm driving to Starbucks past the park where we made up the song about leaves when I was four, past the bridge where we used to stomp, and the trees which look golden in the fall where we went to take photos one day.

I'm at Starbucks but don't care to go in-I realize she was with me the last time I drove through in the Starbucks and still remember what she ordered. Grande Skinny Cinnamon Dulce Latte. 
I order something else, thinking of aspartame and how it can increase risks of cancer.

I am at the store and see some dry shampoo. It triggers a memory.  That's what you need to get for those mornings when you just need a spruce up.

I buy the shampoo, something I wouldn't have done a year ago. It's fantastic stuff. Good advice.

The view on the way down the hill back home is familar and it sickens me. We had a really nice room at the hospital with that view. It's pretty, but I don't care to see it again.

I am in the tub tonight, trying to unwind. There's been a lot of stress lately, and I've fallen off the wagon I got on about trying to de-stress as much as possible. Baths help. I smell the lavender and pick up the face scrub. Burt's Bees Walnut. I remember buying it with my mom. In my head, she warns me about it, You have to be careful with Walnut shell and sensitve skin. It can irritate your skin and make you break out. I'd go easy if I were you. 

There is no transition. I am on the verge of screaming.
How did the Burt's Bees Walnut Scrub outlive my mother? She wasn't even sick, that we knew of, when I bought that stuff. How is that possible?

 A million little things like that. A creative writing book she loaned me in April and told me she "wanted back" still sits on my desk at school, waiting to be returned. We just used up the vanilla extract she loaned me a year ago. How did these cheap, meaningless things last longer than her body, which was so valuable? It makes me so angry.

Her voice will last much longer than any of them, and there is some comfort in that, but not enough to make pacify me. I miss her so much.

As I have these thoughts, an unfamilar song starts playing on my radio, lyrics echoing my thoughts which are then dissolved, for now, into calmer versions of themselves in the ripples of the scented water.

"To a Poet" lyrics by First Aid Kit
.............
The streets here at home had rapidly filled up
With the whitest of snow
And they don't make no excuse for themselves
And there's no need, I know
Now I miss you more than I can take
And I will surely break
And every morning that I wake
God, it's the same
There's nothing more to it,
I just get through it
Oh, there's nothing more to it
I just get through it
It always takes me by surprise
How dark it gets this time of the year
And how apparent it all becomes
That you're not close, not even near
No matter how many times I tell myself
I have to be sincere
I have a hard time standing up
And facing those fears
But Frank put it best when he said
"You can't plan on the heart"
Those words keep me on my feet
When I think I might just fall apart
Now I miss you more than I can take
And I will surely break
And every morning that I wake
God, it's the same
There's nothing more to it,
I just get through it
Oh, there's nothing more to it
I just get through it
Oh, there's nothing more to it
I just get through it
And so I ask where are you now
Just when I needed you
I won't ask again
Because I know there's nothing we can do
Not now, darling, you know it's true