The shallow darkness settles into the room after I flick the lamp switch. I lay in bed next to my husband for sometime in conscious quiet, both on our backs with our eyes trained on the texture of the ceiling coming back into focus. His foot finds mine at the end of the bed to test the waters. “Shall we talk?” it suggests nonverbally. I do not pull my foot away, it is an invitation.

My mother is in the hospital. He learns of family member who passed away in the night. We are both forlorn and laden with thoughts of loss and grief and questions of futility. The conversation in the dark is better than going to sleep. Saying our peace feels necessary, but dangerous. I am unwilling to fall apart, so we tip toe around the landmine of emotion.

“Tell me about your weekend,” he says. In the intimacy of marriage he knows full well the events of the weekend, but there is something in the asking, probing for more depth, more detail. It is an invitation to skip the fundamental facts and divine the existential. He is looking for a discussion, an opening.

I recount a story from visiting my mother. She tells me that her father is dead, a fact I know. We exchange details. I mention that his obituary is a mere two sentences. She tells me it was a heart attack. Ironically, that is the very thing the doctor has said they are preventing this time.

As I tell my husband of this conversation I speak in her voice, changing my own, but it is not the voice in which I heard the statements. It is her original voice. It is all I can do to keep from finding the voicemail messages from long ago, to listen to her, the her that lingers in tone and pitch. I am immediately aware of what has just happened. I tell him, drawing him into my mistake so he can feel it with me. I do not want to be alone in missing her voice.

Her present voice is a mix of gravel raspiness mixed with mashed potato pronunciation. I find in our conversations that I clear my throat because she cannot. I try to force the air sharply through my own larynx to remind her to clear hers. It is like waking next to a sleeping infant and taking a deep breath to the cue them to do likewise. I try to pantomime the exercise for her, to no avail.

Her sound signature is not fully erased. Even in my recollections of the present her eternal voice persists. I wish her to say it the way she would have said it an eon ago. I cannot get her voice out of my head, nor do I want to.