The sound of her voice

Dear Mom,

Three years since that noon when your heart stopped and mine broke; and left an emotional wound. They say, time is the best healer. But mine has not healed. My wound is fresh like it was carved yesterday.

Sometimes I still wake up thinking, I might hear you calling my name, the way only you called- soft, sweet and careful.

I miss your voice the most. It was the first sound that ever belonged to me-warm enough to wrap me on cold nights, firm enough to guide. When I was a kid, I used to make you promise to be home when I came back. I needed your voice at the door the moment I stepped inside the house.

Years later, one afternoon I called you from my office. You picked up and said you were in kitchen garden. I appreciated you for keeping yourself busy and you replied; “Thank You-thank you ”. An English word, so unexpected from you that I laughed. It was such a small, ordinary moment. But now it is carved into my heart. I didn’t know then it would be the kind of moment I’d carry for the rest of my life.

Your voice was the roof over my storm.

Now, it is just an echo in my mind and the silence it left behind makes me believe that you are about to call my name again.

Mom and Dad- since you both left. I have been alone in a way that no one can see. I am an orphan in this world, drifting in a place that does not know me anymore. There is no one I can trust, no one who could ever understand the love I lost, the care I miss. People ask me how I am, and I lie because the truth is heavy. I still carry your voice. It comes to me. Not through my ears, but somewhere inside me. It is not a sentence, not a conversation - just the sound of you, the feeling of your love.

But Mom, sometimes even in deepest silence I hear you. I really hear you - I swear - I hear you. I still carry your voice. It comes to me when I am about to give up. It guides me home, though the home I knew is gone. And maybe that’s what love is - the part of you that stays even when you have gone.

 Nasreen Baba teaches at Govt. Boys Higher Secondary Nowpora, Khanyar.