I don’t have a tape of my father’s voice, and I forgot what his voice sounded like several years ago. When I realized this it distressed me terribly. My sister has an old cassette with a few seconds of his voice, from Christmas morning when she was playing with her new cassette recorder. She has to find the tape first, since it’s buried in with tons of boxes in her attic. He died suddenly, and we were so young, it never occurred to us to record his voice.
He may have spoken on the videotape of my uncle’s wedding, but I haven’t seen it in 15 years. I need to ask them for a copy if he’s on there. It might be painful, but I’d like the chance to hear his voice again.
In my parents’ storage closet there’s a big cardboard box. Inside that box are my wedding album, a box of proofs from the wedding, and some envelopes of photos that other people took at my wedding and reception.
My wife died ten weeks after we were married. Although we had gotten the proofs, I had to go to the photographer’s studio and lay out the wedding album and order prints for the family and so on. I’ve never looked at the photos, and I keep them at my parents’ house so that I don’t get maudlin. The only photos I have are a wallet photo of us at the reception and one of my wife and I with her family.