The Voices I Know

My grandmother taught me to love everyone.  She also taught me my faith.  She lived to ninety-nine, refusing to be singled out for being one-hundred. She was also the second biggest part of my life and I think about her every day.

In her later years I was active duty in the USAF so my regular monthly visits became annual visits.  Distance is its own instrument; it measures what monthly contact smooths over.

In Grandmother’s last two years, I noticed she wasn’t as sharp as she had been. A pause where there had never been one.  Sleep disrupted by horrible nightmares.  But she still knew who I was every time.

No one ever told me a name for it.  I never asked a doctor.  She simply started extinguishing as she approached one hundred.

That is the part I keep, even today.

Nothing about her love had gone anywhere.  Only the edges had softened.

She was the first person I loved who changed while I was still learning her.  I did not know at the time that I was being taught anything.

With Grandmother, I had a face, and a room I had known my whole life, as well as a gentle touch that I would know anywhere.

Now, I have facilitated a telephone chronic pain support group for older people for over twelve years. I have never seen a face.  I know these people entirely by voice.

Every one of them lives with pain. That is why they call in.

We laugh on those calls.  More than anyone would guess from the subject.

They get my jokes.  They get them fast, and they give back better ones.

Pain does not make a person humorless.  It gives them material.

Most of the participants are close to my age.  Somewhere in the twelve years of calls, they have become part of my widening family.  I did not decide that.  It happened while I was busy facilitating the meetings.

I would not recognize one of them on the street.  I would know any of them in their first three words.

Calling them family is not something I assumed.  It is something they let me do.

And over the years, I have heard some of them change.  Not all at once.  A little each year, the way a photograph fades in direct sunlight.

Some who once arrived with their thoughts already organized now find them mid-sentence.  They still get where they are going.  It just takes longer, and it costs them more.

I cannot certify what is happening to them.  I am not a physician, and I have never read a chart.  I only have what comes through the line.

What I can say is that they are not as sharp and focused as they were.

That is the whole truth of what I know.  Anything past that would be me guessing out loud about people who have trusted me with their voices.

So, I listen for the person, not the sharpness.

The pain has not gone anywhere either.  It is still there under every sentence, on the good days and the bad ones.  Whatever else is changing, that has not let up.

They are only diminished some.

The love and respect I have for them have increased. They are still family. What I owe them is the same thing I owed my grandmother in her last two years.

Attention.  Not correction.

They have carried pain longer than I have.  Most of what I know about doing that over a lifetime came through a telephone line.

I have listened to people in pain hold onto their faith on the worst days they have.  Not the easy kind.  The kind that has been tested and did not let go.

That is what I take from these calls.

We tell each other how we are doing.  How we are getting through each day.  What worked this week.  What stopped working.  What living a life of quality looks like when the pain does not leave.

And we still laugh.

I call the roll in my head before each meeting.  I wait for each voice.

I pray that each of them will be there the next time we meet.

The views, positions, and recommendations expressed in this article are based on my personal experiences. They are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of For Grace, the American Chronic Pain Association (ACPA), Front Porch Communities and Services/Well Connected Program or any federal program or committee on which I serve.

I am not a clinician. Nothing here is a diagnosis. My grandmother was never given one that I know of, and I have never seen a chart for anyone in the support group I facilitate. What I describe is what I observed and what I heard — changes in sharpness and focus over time, nothing more. Any account of that group is aggregate and de-identified, shared with permission and without identifying details.

AI was used for editing and organizing; final text is my own.