The Reverberation of Sound
Written by Erica Richmond. Published in Beyond Words Magazine, Issue 65, September 2026
The Reverberation of Sound was the first list essay I ever wrote.
My writing coach noticed that I used sound in almost all of my essays. We decided to see what would happen if I followed that one sense through memory. The answer turned out to include fear, love, parenting, escape, grief, a deaf cat, sleeping pills, airplanes, birds, ice storms, and a whole lot of noise.
Somehow, it became an essay.
And then it became part of my larger manuscript, Yelling at Dead People.
Now it's been published in Beyond Words Magazine.
I'm thrilled. (I'm also a little terrified that my mom will read it!)
The Reverberation of Sound
by Erica Richmond
All I remember is the bang, and then it was over. That is the first line of a short story I wrote in highschool. The main character’s name was Slate. I was so proud of coming up with such a unique name. It was 1991 and I was living in a small farming community surrounded by Jennifer’s and Matthew’s. Over a decade later, I dreamt that I was being hunted. My real-life boyfriend was following me. I ran into the garage. I slunk into the car, quietly closing the door behind me. I hid below the windows and held my breath. For a while all was silent. Then the door opened. The barrel of a gun filled my vision. All I remember is the bang, and then it was over.
I often talk about the voices in my head but that’s not entirely accurate. I only hear one voice. Mine. It says things like, “You’re always leaving him when he needs you.” “You’re a fucking cunt.” “Why are you always crying?” “You are a terrible mother.” At first I would cower. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” Then I got angry and screamed back until my tears turned into remorse. These days, I smile and breathe. “Honey, it’s okay. We’re safe now. Shhh.”
Lucy is 17 years old and deaf. We are not sure how long she’s been deaf; she’s always ignored us. She’ll often stand in the stairwell to my bedroom and howl. Sometimes I pick her up, press my mouth against her, and sing while slowly dancing across the living room. The reverberation of sound is love. Lucy is my cat.
My youngest son has a sensitivity to noise. He has escaped public bathrooms in silent tears while rows of toilets flushed in unison and the super turbo hand dryers roared. The first time I took him to the theatre, he was instantly upset. I fed him kernels of buttery popcorn one by one every time he went to cry so that my movie-loving eldest could watch the show. Eventually we ran out of popcorn.
There is a scene in The Grinch where he tries to block out the noise coming from Whoville by making even more noise himself. I have banged my way through most of my life on the loudest setting possible. Turn up the noise. Make it go faster. Increase the danger. Slam my head between two cymbals. Just make it stop.
Things I do loudly: sneeze, laugh, fuck.
For five years, I lived along a flight path. My house was along a route to and from Pearson airport YYZ (why why zed, because we’re Canadian). In my wall-panelled house, I would listen longingly as the travelers above me escaped – anywhere would be better than here. When driving my kids to 6am hockey practice on Sunday mornings, we would drive under the planes. “Where would you like to fly to if you were on that plane?” “China” they responded every time, without fail. A recurring dream I have is me standing outside and a plane crashes beside me. I looked it up on Google. Dreaming about plane crashes signifies that you feel a loss of control in your life. I once dreamt of dozens of planes crashing in flames over and over and over all around me. I woke up and searched for flights. Get me out of here.
Sitting on a hard wooden chair, I doze in and out of sleep. I hear codes being called overhead, metal carts being rolled quickly as their contents shift from side to side with a clatter, the man to the left of me sobbing in anguished loneliness, the beeping of the machine beside, keeping time with my breath. Through all of this noise, I doze in and out of fitful sleep as my child sleeps deeply beside me. I guess it helps to have a stomach filled with sleeping pills.
Birds I can identify by sound: black-capped chickadee, mourning dove, song sparrow, American robin, common grackle, American goldfinch, European starling, American crow, house finch, Northern cardinal, ring-billed gull, red-winged blackbird, blue jay, Canada goose, mallard. common loon.
Laying in my bed under one sheet, 3 quilts, two fleece blankets, and a cat, I am surrounded by darkness. All I can hear are trees breaking under the weight of ice and sirens panicking through the city. I long to hear the hum of electricity, the hiss of my furnace, a hint that somebody is alive.
These days I crave silence. I want to swallow it whole. I want it to fill my body. I want to float away on its vastness, basking the warm sun, down a gentle tree-lined stream. I want to curl up inside of it. I want to watch it from behind the lids of my eyes. Soft pinks, baby blues, and pale yellow. Nothing jagged like magenta. I want to wear the silence as a blanket. I want to sit by the lake at the end of my street and pass it out to the motors that race past me. I have heard too much.
The Reverberation of Sound is one piece of Yelling at Dead People, my memoir-in-essays manuscript.
The manuscript is about grief, memory, family, anger, love, and the strange, messy work of living with what remains after someone dies.
I'm still working on it and simultaneously seeking agents and publishers.
Want to write a list essay?
List essays can look deceptively simple. Make a list! How hard could it be?
Well, it’s not always as simple as a to-do list but just as satisfying as crossing tasks off it!
I've made a lesson about how to use the list form to discover connections, create movement, and make meaning without knowing exactly where you're going when you start.
Want to get a little braver with your writing?
Writing something is vulnerable. But letting another person read it is another.
And letting a whole bunch of strangers read it is... well. And letting your mom read it? YIKES!
The Courage to Write: A Four-Week Writing Intensive is for writers who want to make room for the work they actually want to write, even when their inner critic has other plan
About Erica Richmond
Erica Richmond is a Canadian writer of brave stories, public speaker, and writing mentor based in Peterborough, Ontario. Her work explores grief, healing, mental health, complicated relationships, and the messy, surprising ways we find our way back to ourselves.
She is the author of Pixie and the Bees and Pixie and the Fox, and is currently writing Yelling at Dead People, an experimental memoir-in-essays about complicated grief, motherhood, anger, love, and healing after the death of her children’s father.
Erica also speaks and teaches on writing, communication, storytelling, and the courage it takes to put our words into the world. Through her 1:1 writing mentorships, she helps writers make space for the stories they want to tell and develop the confidence to tell them in their own way.
