Volume Control

I saw my mother on the television last night. It happens more often than you’d think, even though she’s been gone for more than a year. I’ll be cooking in the kitchen or chatting on the phone when, all of a sudden, I will hear her familiar voice coming from the other room.

That’s what television does to its celebrities, minor or major. It recycles them. Brings them back, fresh, to a new audience.

I watched the show. It was a well-told story and favorable to her abilities. I cried at the end, from pride in her accomplishments.

Not all such shows were supportive or even kind. I remember one that entrapped her into appearing only to twist everything she said and discredit her, putting her in the same class as charlatans and believers in urban myths. They interviewed people antagonistic to her efforts. I was appalled. She, of course, was humiliated. But without a manager or agent to protect her interests, these things occasionally happened.

Fortunately, the public has a short memory. In a couple of days, it was forgotten. Just another whack show. Just another psychic. Except, of course, for the reruns. Syndicated immortality.

I can’t help wondering if there is another kind of immortality as well, one that my mother is now enjoying? She believed in it—how could she not, when she worked on the threshold between life and death, when she routinely obtained information and greetings and love from people (and animals) who had left this earth? And because I lived in proximity to her and experienced her work, I tried to believe as well. That there is more, that we continue, that we can even communicate with those we love on either side.

But death has been a hard door. With my father, I experienced his presence deeply and often after death. In dreams. Washing dishes. In the car. Then his presence faded after a time. As if he’d gone on to do other things—or I had.

Mother and I were closer, more attuned, and shared a similar belief system. Unlike Dad, who died in a kind of shock that fervent religion did not save him from cancer. I said the same thing to both of them before they died.

"I don’t know what comes next. But you’re going to find out before I do. And I’m betting it’s not what we think—just like everything else about existence. I’m betting it’s more complex, more amazing, more cohesive than we can imagine. And if it’s not—well then, we’ll never know because we’ll be snuffed out like candles."

Still, I hoped that my mother’s abilities to communicate across different spheres or dimensions or whatever would make it easier for her to get word back to me. But nothing dramatic or spooky happened, like her appearing to me during the night or calling my name. I sometimes wonder if it's because I resisted hearing from her after she died; it sounds mean, but I carried the burden of my mom's communications for my entire life. Her decline and demise were painful to watch and not what I wished or expected, ever. But her absence in my life was also a relief. Not just relief for the end of her suffering; the relief of someone who's head has been hammered on a daily basis and now was free of it. Who wasn't going to be pulled into drama and bickering and complaints anymore.

That isn't to say I haven't missed her. After she died, the grief sometimes staggered me. I re-watched George Clooney in The Descendants and, in one tiny scene after he's announced his wife's impending demise, he falls to his knees on the lawn with bowed head and stays that way for a few moments. This time, when I saw him do that, I understood! I've had grief for my mom catch me and shove me to ground in just that way.

But actual contact with her has been nebulous, more like thinking of her unexpectedly than feeling her around me. So I still don’t know if that's her contacting me—or me contacting my own inner needs and desires. I’ve carried my mom's voice around inside me all my life. I’ve spent years trying to mute it. Maybe death just turns the volume up again.