Local Voices: Let Them Talk

By Dennis Edwards
Editorial Page Columnist
The New Journal and Guide

There was a time, as she grew older, when I used to get impatient with my mother, Lorraine Reid Edwards Hardie. She frequently told the same stories, the same way, over and over on the phone and in person.

One day my son Justin Dennis Edwards, now 35, then a little boy, asked me why I stopped interrupting Grandma’s stories. Written into those questions was his desire to know why I no longer seemed to mind the calls lasting so long or her repeating herself so much.

My answer was to share how I finally realized that one day I wouldn’t be able to hear her voice again. Wouldn’t be able to listen to her advice or feel her love and patience as she shared the best thoughts and feelings she had to offer. The things she always wanted to tell me. The only way she could.

So from then on I showed him how to do that.

Wherever we lived I answered her calls quickly.

Put her on speaker when I was busy or listened and laughed with the phone against my ear as she talked as long as she wanted. Did that till she gently said “Ok, I guess I’ll let you go now!” You could feel the smile on the other end when I said “No. Keep talking. I’m not going anywhere” or “I’ve got plenty of time.”

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It’s important to hear what Mom or Dad want to tell us and why. It’s also important for them to tell their story, just to be heard. To know that we love them enough  to really listen. Just like they listened to us.

Actually, the “why” may be the most important part of those conversations. “Why” frequently amplifies one of those precious moments when a parent wants to share a game changing revelation, emotion or reason why they are who they are and raised us the way they did. Something we never knew, a reason we never understood or worse mis-understood.

Decades later, I can’t tell you how glad I am we talked so often! You see, I can’t talk to Mama now like I used to. She died in 2001. But I’m so very glad I listened and learned to encourage her to tell me whatever she wanted, the way she wanted, as long and often as she wanted.

Even now, like many of you, I still wish I could hear her voice again. Tell Mama all about it just one more time. Truth is we simply don’t know how long we’ll have them, Mama and Daddy. We also don’t know how long we will be forced to live without them when they’re gone.

Maybe it’s just good to realize how those tables turn on us too. How we will one day anxiously wait to sit and talk with our adult children as our parents did with us. We’ll come to understand how they felt and why they wanted to pass on what they learned. Perhaps, the only gifts they had left to offer. A prelude, so to speak, to how grateful we will be when our children are wise and patient enough to keep listening as we share the best of who we are and what we know.

Please, take the time to listen to Mama and Daddy no matter how old they get or how long it takes. Remember, one day, if you live long enough, you won’t be able to have those talks again. And you’ll wish, so very much, you did and could.

Dennis Edwards is a Major Market Emmy and Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Award Winning Television and Radio News Anchor, Investigative Reporter, Newspaper Columnist and Pastor. He is a graduate of Virginia Union University, its Samuel Dewitt Proctor School of Theology and Suffolk High School

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