Threads of Her Voice

Long after she was gone, I still heard her voice.

Not in the eerie, ghost-story kind of way—no creaking floors or flickering lights—but in the quiet moments, when the world stilled just enough to let memory breathe. It came in fragments: the way she said my name when she was amused, the lullaby she hummed while folding laundry, the firm yet kind tone she used when I doubted myself.

Her voice stitched itself into the fabric of my life like thread through worn cloth, delicate yet unbreakable.


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My mother wasn’t loud. Her power wasn’t in decibels, but in depth. She spoke in soft certainty, like a river that carved canyons over time. She never needed to shout to command a room. Her presence hummed in the silence between words.

She was a seamstress by trade, a storyteller by instinct. She believed every person carried a voice that wasn’t just for speaking—but for weaving meaning into the world.

“Words are stitches,” she told me once, running her fingers through a basket of tangled thread. “They can mend or unravel.”


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When I was a child, I thought she was magic.

She’d sit at her antique Singer sewing machine, foot pressing rhythmically on the pedal, and sing softly in her native Farsi. Her voice flowed like silk, the vowels long and lilting. I didn’t always understand the words, but I felt them—like warmth, like home.

One afternoon, when I was about seven, I threw a tantrum because my favorite dress ripped. I remember the sound—an ugly tear, like a scream in fabric. I thought it was ruined forever.

She said nothing at first. Just picked it up, examined the damage, and quietly began to sew.

As she worked, she sang. Not the usual lullaby. This time, a story—about a girl who wore a red dress made from courage, not cloth. By the time she finished, the tear was invisible. But I remembered the story more than the stitches.

I wore that dress until it no longer fit.


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Years later, when I moved away for university, I found her voice in unexpected places.

A voicemail on a hard day. A handwritten letter tucked into my suitcase. A recording of her singing, which she had secretly sent to my email during finals week. She always knew when I needed her.

Even in silence, she spoke.

She taught me to listen to the world differently—to notice the texture in words, the emotions tucked between syllables, the way someone’s voice could fray when they were tired or tremble when they were trying not to cry.

Her gift was hearing what wasn’t said.


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She passed away on a winter morning, the sky pale and uncommitted to either snow or sunshine. It was a quiet exit, like everything else about her. The nurses said she went peacefully.

But the world felt loud in her absence. Deafening, even.

I didn’t speak for days. Every word I tried to form felt too raw, too brittle. My throat ached with unsaid goodbyes. I clung to recordings of her voice the way others hold old photos. I replayed them at night, imagining she was in the next room, humming her way through dreams.


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One evening, months later, I opened the cedar chest she left me.

Inside were dozens of fabric swatches—silk, cotton, velvet—all stitched with little phrases in her handwriting. Proverbs, jokes, and simple reminders:

"You are enough."
"Listen twice, speak once."
"Laughter is a kind of thread."

At the bottom was a small audio player wrapped in lace.

When I pressed play, her voice filled the room.

“My darling,” it said, “if you’re listening to this, I’m no longer where you can see me. But I am in every thread you carry. My voice is in your voice now. Speak kindly. Speak truly. And never stop weaving stories.”

I wept, but not from sorrow.

From awe.


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Now, I teach voice and storytelling workshops in her memory. I keep one of her stitched phrases framed on the wall:

“Let your words mend.”

And every time I speak, I hear her beneath the surface. A whisper, a hum, a thread.

Still weaving me forward.


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