The Long Goodbye: An Audio Memoir; A Preview

I started working on this project while my mom was still battling lung cancer. I was, and still am, fascinated by audio storytelling. In the late summer of 2016, I was looking for a story to tell. When my mom was diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer I thought, “This is it! I will record the story of my mom fighting and beating lung cancer!”

I began recording audio. I mainly used my phone but sometimes I’d walk around with a handheld chrome microphone complete with a black fuzzy windscreen connected to my phone with a USB cable and adapter. As my mom’s condition worsened, I became more determined to capture all of the audio possible. “Every story goes through this,” I thought, “the situation has to get bleaker for there to be an emotional stake. It’ll make the recovery that much more dramatic.” I was so sure that my mom’s health would make a complete U-turn and that she would beat the cancer back into remission. I was convinced I was recording what was going to conclude as a miraculous story.

My mom didn’t beat back her cancer. She succumbed and died on December 25, 2016. Christmas Day, my favorite holiday.

In retrospect, and after a ton of completed emotional work, I realize that I used my project as method of distancing myself from what was happening in front of me. I witnessed my mom deteriorate from a lively, beaming, and musical person to a small, frail, sunken eyed, skin and bones, and paled skinned being I did not recognize. I used the project as a barrier built by denial to protect myself from my own feelings. After my mom’s memorial service, I uploaded all of the audio files into an external hard drive and tried to forget about them.

But I couldn’t just abandon the project. I began to notice a small burning sensation in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t cease and I would only feel some sort of relief whenever I thought about completing the project. I couldn’t simply let all that audio sit unused. All that audio I gathered needed to be shared or else I would be left feeling as though I distanced myself from my mom during the final months of her life for no productive reason. The least I could do was complete the project, tell the story, and at the very least have some sort of finality in regards to those audio files.

So, I began to devise a new approach to tell a different story. One about my grief. This project started in 2016 and I cannot say that I have a hard completion date set but I can promise that it will be completed. The audio file above is somewhat of a teaser. The vision for this story has had many evolutions and I have learned so much in these past few years. I hope to share what I’m now calling The Long Goodbye - an audio memoir with you soon. Thank you for reading.

4/30/2021