The Tape I Wasn’t Meant To Find
by Storyora
It was in a box marked “misc.” under the stairs. The kind of box that smells like dust and forgotten years. I wasn’t looking for anything important. Just cables, maybe. Spare batteries. My old Game Boy. But there it was: a clear plastic cassette with a handwritten label that simply said, “Tuesday.”
No date. No explanation. Just “Tuesday.”
Now, you need to know this: my mother died in 2019. Sudden. Brain aneurysm. One day she was making jokes about how nobody in the family could cook rice properly, the next she was... gone. We cleaned out the house in waves. Grief comes in waves, too. But that tape had somehow escaped all the sorting, the tossing, the donating. Or maybe... maybe I wasn’t supposed to find it back then.
I Almost Didn’t Listen
Here’s the thing. Old tapes feel sacred. And invasive. Like opening a stranger’s diary. Except it wasn’t a stranger. It was her. And part of me was terrified that it’d just be blank. Or worse—just some random recording of TV static or shopping lists.
Still, I found my dad’s old Walkman in the same box. Popped in new batteries. Pressed play. And—there she was.
Her voice. Her voice. I hadn’t heard it in years. I mean, sure, memory gives you echoes. Dream fragments. But this—this was full-bodied. Clear. She laughed. Coughed. Cleared her throat. Said my name.
"Tuesday. I’ve decided to record something every week. Just for me. Or maybe for you. I don’t know yet."
I had to sit down.
The Unfiltered Version of Her
The tape wasn’t long. Maybe 30 minutes. But it was... everything. She talked about my dad’s bad habit of leaving spoons in the sink, her favorite socks being stolen by the dryer, how she felt weirdly guilty for not loving her job more, even though it paid the bills. She mentioned me—several times. Random things. How I used to hum when I did math homework. That she worried I was too quiet at school. That she loved how I looked when I was focused. Like I could turn invisible in my own head.
I cried. Obviously. But not just from sadness. From recognition. She was so human. Not the edited, polished version I’d created in my grief. Not the “mom” I gave speeches about at the funeral. She was silly, tired, sometimes anxious. And loving. Oh, so loving.
The Unexpected Gift
I don’t know why she recorded it. Maybe she’d planned more and never got around to them. Maybe Tuesday was the only day she felt brave enough. But that one tape became something sacred. Like a time capsule for my heart.
I digitized it. Played it again with headphones, trying to hear background sounds. The clink of her tea spoon. A dog barking faintly outside. A kettle boiling. All pieces of home I didn’t know I missed so much.
She said something at the end that stuck with me. It wasn’t profound. It wasn’t meant to be. But it mattered.
“If you ever hear this, I hope you’re being kind to yourself. Please tell future-you that past-me was proud. Even on the messy days.”
That line—God. That one took me out.
I Talk to Her Differently Now
It’s weird, how grief rewrites your relationship with someone. I used to talk about my mom. Now, sometimes, I talk to her. In the car. In the kitchen. I tell her things. Silly, daily things. Like how I finally learned how to make rice properly. Or how I started journaling again. Or that I met someone who makes me laugh so hard I snort.
I’ve also started recording my own voice. Not every week. Not on cassettes, obviously. But voice memos. Little things. What the sky looked like today. A song I can’t stop playing. A dream I had that made no sense but felt oddly true.
I don’t know if anyone will ever listen to them. But maybe one day, someone will. And maybe they’ll feel the same jolt of recognition I felt.
That matters.
If You’re Still Reading
I hope this makes you dig through your own old boxes. I hope you find something. A note. A photo. A voicemail. Something real. Because we forget—we really do—that the people we love are more than our memories of them. They’re messy and vibrant and full of contradictions. And that’s what makes them beautiful.
If you're grieving someone, check out tools like Grief.com or What’s Your Grief. It’s not about fixing. Just understanding. Just remembering. Just being human about it.
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