The Space between Two Very’s
By Susan Leary
Part 1: The Sound of My Grandfather’s Voice
I write often about my grandfather’s suicide, which happened in 1961 in the cellar of the home he shared with my Nana when my mother was only two years old. For almost 50 years, my mother believed her father died of a heart attack, but soon after my Nana’s passing in 2009, she learned otherwise: the details offered by an older cousin she’d lost touch with through the years, but one who loved my Nana enough to safeguard her secret. As one would expect, to come into such knowledge is deeply unsettling, the shock of it forcing a strange, unendurable kind of silence on the body. What I remember mostly, though, is how deeply my mother and I wished to know my grandfather’s voice—to hear the sound of it: the sound of an explanation, or at the very least, the sound of something we might be able to live with. Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to grasp the nature of someone’s voice because voice resists not only language but even more so, imagination. When someone I’ve never met is described to me, I can dream up an array of potential features, faces, and idiosyncratic gestures, yet I cannot conjure a voice I’ve never heard. While there is deep sorrow in this, there is also something miraculous in that to know another’s voice becomes proof of the intimacy of that relationship. It solidifies that voice as both fact and artifact.
Interestingly, the reasons we delight in hearing another’s voice are the very reasons we despise hearing our own, a condition so widespread it’s been dubbed “voice confrontation.” In a foregrounding study, psychologists Philip Holzman and Clyde Rousey determined that what makes voice confrontation so unnerving is the way in which it facilitates an unexpected and thus unwelcomed confrontation with the self. In their words: “The disruption and defensive experience are a response to a sudden confrontation with the expressive qualities in the voice which the subject had not yet intended to express and which, until the moment, he or she was not aware has been expressed.” In such a configuration, voice becomes akin to vulnerability and self-understanding, qualities we look for in others but often mask when it comes to ourselves. In a classic example, the sound of my voice is often likened to my mother’s whose voice is an event unto itself, loud and cheerful with a high-pitched enthusiasm. I am quite charmed by this voice, the intensity of its transparency and optimism—the way it awakens one as might the sun shining through the window on the brightest morning. And yet, I do not see this manifested in my voice, nor in my personality, at all.
Over the years, I have thus become increasingly interested in the ways one’s voice is believed to hold vital information about a person, particularly how and why its cadence, volume, and timbre are considered insights into things such as one’s joys and sadnesses; one’s way of listening, contacting, and interpreting; as well as one’s social and emotional disposition. For me, voice is the most nuanced marker of identity, an accumulation of one’s ever-evolving relationship with the world. It is sacred and enduring, persistent enough to withstand the test of memory. In conversations with family, friends, and even acquaintances about the loss of a loved one, it is not uncommon to hear of their immense fear of forgetting their loved one’s voice: “Will I forget what my (mother, father, wife, husband, daughter, son, etc.) sounds like?” is a predominant question asked of grief counselors and is a topic that circulates widely on grief message boards as well. One’s voice thus serves as a connective force between people, a force deeply cherished as the very sound of one’s voice figures as an act of love.
When I first learned of my grandfather’s suicide, my desire to know his voice demonstrated the ways in which I instinctually registered voice as a conduit for love, or in this case, a conduit for clarity and logic. Hope often comes in the form of hypotheticals, and if, I thought, I could hear his voice, then I could also begin to hear his answers, as insufficient as I already understood those “answers” to be. Which is precisely the point. When it comes to answers, it is the principle that matters. In other words, answers for the sake of answers—always, no matter what. In this way, the fact that one should even want to explain themselves to another becomes enough. It suggests one is kind and well-meaning, sensitive to the emotions of others. I find it difficult to believe my grandfather could be otherwise, yet with a remarkable strength and abandon, my mother believes he could easily be deficient in decency and compassion. On this one, our voices coming to a fork in the road:
Thursday, February 6, 2020
(Your birthday: February 6, 1919. Today, you would be 101 years old.)
How often did you think about the event that would change the rest of our lives? Are you thinking about it now? Are you thinking about what, along with a quieted mind, your dead body might carry into the afterlife? Daylilies. Shrapnel. Water from the eyes of children? Looking at you, I did not know daydreaming could be so tragic, though sixty years later, I sit as you sit in my own chair, my own dog at my side. Both of us settled into late afternoon and its gift of easy contemplation. And then, the ringing of the phone. My mother’s voice asking what it means to love a father. She asks because she wants to love hers. She wants to know what she has missed. I love my father, I say. And looking at you, I wonder were you to awaken and rise from your chair with the grace and goodness of a god, what would you say to her now? How would you explain yourself to your daughter?
Part 2: Myth of the Cicadas
In literature, myth, and philosophy, the cicada is most often associated with the magic and enchantment of voice. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates details the history of the cicadas, who were once men so devoted to charming the Muses with the beauty of their song that they forgot to care for themselves and died from malnourishment and lack of sleep. But the Muses, honored by their zeal and affection, transformed these men into insects and gifted them a capacity to sing without rest until they died, so long as they were vigilant of their listeners. Who, for example, was inspired by their song? Who was spelled into idleness? It is a captivating image: the cicadas—dutiful, protective, and watchful of humanity, though through the functions of their own merriment, as if the Muses rewarded the cicadas’ self-indulgence with near-immortal life.
Though I will never experience the sound of my grandfather’s voice, I often idealize the chance of hearing it, believing it to be immortal in its power, prevailing and resonant as myth. This, of course, is because I want to resist easy reductions. I want to believe my grandfather’s life to be more than the impact of a single decision. While such a view is useful in theory, it is also complicated in its application, isolating a person from the reality of his or her flaws as well as from the consequences that arise through complex human interaction, all in favor of a beautiful yet more illusive image. To believe a person immortal thus privileges the most glorious, and often spurious, ideations of a self.Hence, the voice of the cicada—or in this case, the voice of my grandfather—becomes a metaphor for the tantalizing sound of one’s own voice, which only distracts one from the voices of others. Martin Walls addresses this concern in his poem, “Cicadas at the End of Summer,” lamenting: “What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory; / The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned // The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk / in the bottom of a mug.” Here, voice reflects the conditions of its surroundings, and as a result, the theme of resurrection is replaced with the theme of an irretrievable past. What remains is described as “stubborn” since it knows only to flaunt the fact of an even greater absence. The cicadas, once adored, are thus no longer let off the hook and instead, leave a looming, abiding sadness. It is likely my mother would appreciate this poem.
Part 3: Earth’s Hum
In the 1990s, it was discovered the Earth is continuously “humming”—a low-frequency micro-seismic phenomenon known as “free oscillation” that is inaudible to the human ear and detectable only by scientific equipment. The sound has been likened to such things as “a truck idling,” “a bell ringing” and “the white noise of a TV, slowed down 10,000 times.” Until recently its cause was considered a mystery, but now researchers have identified various oceanic waves as the “secret” source. But what, exactly, is a “secret”—and what should be made of the relationship between a secret and sound, particularly the way it lingers between what is said and not said, between intimacy and disconnection? In her poem, “The Reticent Volcano Keeps,” Emily Dickinson explores the nature of a secret through the language of potential eruption, bringing to light the ways in which a secret communicates sincerity through the very fact of its dormancy. The poem reads as follows:
CVII
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let ever babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
That my grandfather’s suicide remained “dormant” for the entirety of my Nana’s life generates a multiplicity of emotion within me. At times, I understand her decision not to tell my mother what happened so as to protect her daughter from the grief and stigma of suicide. At other times, I believe my Nana’s silence to be reckless and insensitive, denying my mother a truth she deserves and my grandfather the honor of his memory. As Dickinson imparts, however, the purest kind of secret is one that is eternally kept. That the volcano’s tendency towards eruption “never slumbers” or “confides” in another suggests that secrets are inherently sacred, perhaps even self-affirming. Dickinson takes this a step further, intimating that a secret is, in fact, “kept” through the act of it being shared. Mother nature—here, the volcano—is attuned to the heart of Jehovah though through a sixth sense: they know each other’s “tales.” Dickinson’s use of the term “keeps” thus becomes a function of intimacy and intuition as opposed to isolation and possession.
Still, to interpret a secret as such requires some convincing. I want to believe a secret resists power structures—that my Nana is more than her own “buckled lips.” All of which is to say, I want to hear what is intended solely and specifically for me. As science and Dickinson indicate, unlike us, the Earth understands it exists perpetually in the form of a murmur: a vibration—which means that with itself and others, the Earth is gentle, unassuming, soft-spoken. According to my Nana, so too was my grandfather. More crucially, however, this murmur is what might even be called eternal, a sentiment echoed in the closing decree of Dickinson’s poem: “The only secret people keep / Is Immortality.” As such, it becomes possible, necessary even, for me to believe that my mother and I participate in the secret of my grandfather’s suicide as much as my Nana. We construct it, now, through our continuous questioning. We construct it through one word: why? And so, the Earth’s hum is nothing more than our awe and wonder, the life-course of a deep and immaculate investment. The humming is a chorus of voices whose only intention is love. That humming is us: my mother and I.
Part 4: Instructions from the Blessed Mother
Since I can remember, I have associated love, especially romantic love, with longing—a result, I think, of the ways in which my Nana talked about her relationship with my grandfather. She was characteristically spare and precise with her words: He was a good man, she would say, regardless of the question. But at the time, I was less interested in my grandfather’s disposition than I was in my Nana’s sorrow, which even at nine or ten years old, I already had ideas about. So I would press her on details about what it meant to be alone, to live a life without a husband: to grieve. I was desperate for signs of sadness in her face: tears, broken language, a tightened jaw. But my Nana retained her composure, a strength I quickly came to romanticize. Most often, I asked my Nana if she missed her husband. If? she would say, and then, closing her eyes: Yes, very, very much. I was enamored with the double very, particularly the way her whole body collapsed into the rhythm of those two words as they exited her mouth: each one emphatic and drawn out, a clear pause between them. I often wondered what happened within the space of that pause. What my Nana remembered, heard, felt, or imagined. And so that’s what I came to believe love was: the space between two very’s.
Years later and equipped with information, I have the wherewithal to know my questions most likely brought my Nana back to the night and morning of my grandfather’s death: the space between February 23rd and February 24th. Because that is how trauma returns, intensely and immediately to the site of its origins. For my Nana, that meant going to bed and then waking to the image of her husband suspended from the rafters, my two-year-old mother snug on her hip. In the medical examiner’s report, my grandfather’s cause of death is listed as strangulation by hanging—a prolonged and noisy death, one in which the body gives itself away. While difficult to admit, I imagine my Nana must have heard something, even if it were only slight or intuitive. I wonder, then, what gave her cause to not rise, suddenly, from her bed. I wonder what miracle allowed my Nana to transform the sounds of a violence into the sounds of a peaceable dream.
In John 2: 1-11, we are told the story of how Jesus turned water into wine at the Marriage of Cana. How after it ran out, he asked the wedding servants to fill six stone jars with water, and how upon ladling it, it was not water anymore, but wine: the very best wine any of the guests had ever tasted. As a girl, I loved biblical stories as these because I loved the indistinguishability between magic and faith. I loved what a common man made possible. But this was not a story about Jesus, my Nana would explain, rather Mary. Strikingly, while the Blessed Mother is known for her grace and guidance, she is recorded as speaking only a handful of times in scripture, one of these at the Marriage of Cana. When it is discovered the wine has run out, the wedding servants, in fact, first approach Mary, to which she replies: “Do whatever Jesus tells you.” I cannot say I understood the importance of this when I was younger—Mary’s one-liner of strict obedience and relinquishing of control. But gravely and in the form of a whisper, my Nana would say: No, Susan, to listen to Mary is to listen to your own heart.
While my Nana never mentioned the fact of suicide, she did tell me that the night my grandfather died, she dreamt of the beauty and lovingness of the Blessed Mother’s voice. That she heard the sweetnessof its sound and the patient nature of its grace. According to my Nana, the Blessed Mother’s words were simple and direct: Everything will be okay. Which is to say, in that moment, my Nana found the strength to do whatever necessary to love to her husband, meaning she loved him enough to accept the fact that what he wanted to do with his life was end it.
Part 5: Supernova 1987A
It’s possible when I replay the sound of someone’s voice in my mind that I’m not hearing it all. Rather, that I’m seeing a silhouetted version of it. This is not my theory, but my father’s. He insists we’ve internalized the capacities for speech, language, and visualization to such a degree that we’re able to perceive the illusion or idea of a thing as the thing itself. As he sees it, a voice is remembered as though it were in fact mapped out in the sky, something like a supernova or mock constellation: beautiful to look at, though only a suggestion.
This is not to say a voice cannot transmit its brilliance into the atmosphere forever. According to astronomers, 160,000 years ago there was an explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the death collapse of a magnificent star which left in its wake a beaming new star, or supernova, in the shape of a bullseye. This light was first eyed from Earth in 1987 during the nighttime hours between the 23rd and 24th of February, and to this day, it remains the only supernova observed by the human eye with a telescope, an astronomical wonder unto itself. What fascinates me most about the supernova, however, is the way in which it distills sound into image. A supernova is considered epic in its volume, yet we cannot hear its impact across space. This is how I prefer to imagine my grandfather as well, both his voice and his final hours: a secret kept for itself.
They say a piece of writing should always end with the writer’s voice. That the writer should abandon quotations and be credible, authoritative, sincere. As a composition teacher, I understand the reasons for this, especially as it relates to young writers who need the encouragement to be more intentional with their words: to make a statement. But must an ending be so dramatic or self-referential? Might an ending be better served to express love for its reader, or to acknowledge the sadness in simply departing? In the words of poet and essayist Jenny Boully: “The ending says, There is nothing else that I can do to keep you, and so—despite the heaviness and the utter heartbreak that you may feel—I leave you with such a small message, such a small sorrow, such a small sound. That is what an ending should do.”
And so, against my better judgment, this is where I leave you, Grandfather. This is what an ending should do.
END