Voices

July 6, 2011

It’s 4:30 a.m. I’ve been awakened by a feeling of dread, pre-grief if you will, and it nags at my soul and fills my heart with so many thoughts I can’t lie in bed any longer. I slip out and shut the door behind me because I know the light will awaken my husband.  I grab my laptop and set it on the dining room table and switch on one of the buffet lamps behind me.  As I crack it open I feel, for the first time in my life, like a writer.  I know the sole purpose of opening this device is to record words and feelings, and hope they will touch someone with as much feeling I invoke with every stroke of the keyboard.  

So, what is pre-grief?  Pre-grief is something I have experienced before death.  I felt it before my sister died, my father, and now I’m feeling it for my mother.  It’s as if my heart goes through the motions of the inevitable so when the time does come my spirit is stronger to accept it.

So when I awoke this morning I found myself bracing for the phone to ring, and then the emotions took over.  The reason for all of this is because my mother, Doris Mae Mary Ann Mordica Csaszar, fell out of bed on July 2 and broke her hip.  She is 84 years old and in fair health bordering on the side of poor health.  On that day there was no other thought in my mind except that the break had to be repaired.  Letting her lie in a bed with a broken bone was not an option.  The bone doctor felt the same way and operated on her later that morning despite the risks involved.  It was a decision that had to be made.

I spent the evening with her last night, and I saw so many similarities between the way she was and the way my father was in the week leading up to his death in 2008.  In my mind I attributed it to the medication she’s being given.  Surely that is why she has no appetite, is shivering, and her voice has weakened to trembling whisper.

It is her voice that has touched me this morning.  You see, my memories of the past are few and scattered.  I keep my best childhood memories wrapped up in very small packages.  Like random presents piled under a Christmas tree, they are an assortment of the unexpected and every now and then I can shake a box and know what is inside.  This morning I visited that tree and found a small package, shook it and my mother’s voice came tumbling out.

 When I was a very small child there was one thing that would bring me comfort as nothing else.  Overwhelming, pure comfort.  That was to sit in my mother’s lap with my head against her chest and listen to the vibrations of her voice.   I could sit there as long as she or the situation allowed.  The vibrations would mingle with the voice coming out of her mouth, and that voice floated up and joined the other voices sitting around a table.  My family was always sitting around a table.  On any given day  my mother’s steady but subtle voice mingled with the other voices around the table belonging to one or many of her many sisters, laughing, reminiscing, and sharing stories about their children and their daily lives over a cup of coffee and whatever sweet my mother had baked or someone had brought with them.  These voices created a symphony from which I loathed to be detached.  My favorite place, or happy place if you will, was to sit in that box seat that was my mother’s lap and listen to the rhythms of her body with one ear and the voices of the extended family with the other.  This family could include the matriarch, my grandmother, Frances Selby Mordica, with her distinctive New Orleans drawl littered with “dahlin” and Italian words (or so she thought) she picked up from her husband and his very Italian family.  There was my Aunt Rita’s husky, smoky voice, brought to a rasp as she would throw her head back in laughter. Aunt Mary, the eldest sibling, adding her opinion in her quiet, genteel voice. Aunt Frances’s more authoritative voice laced with Southern charm and enunciation.  Aunt Angela’s higher pitched chatter and twittering laughter.  She reminded me of a little bird.  And, on occasion of her visit from Rhode Island, there was Aunt Gertrude’s booming voice with a New England-Italian-Forgettaboutit accent standing apart from everyone in the room, yet joining in perfect harmony.  These women were my influences.  These women live inside of me and shape my life in invisible ways.

I hope to use this space to delve deeper into this family and my own family, and explore these influences to learn more about myself.  A “journey” so to speak that will capture what it was like growing up in a large family that has remained relatively close for almost a century.

Join me?