“I kept it,so it wouldn’t vanish with me”: Audio letters as ambivalent sites of conflicting memory

Introduction

As a child, I vividly remember my mother listening to an analog cassette recording of my late grandmother’s voice. The cassette preserved my grandmother’s singing and speaking, though I cannot recall the exact content of her words. My grandmother had recorded and sent it while visiting my uncle, who was working in a western city in Turkey. My mother would listen and sing along while tears flowed—overcome with emotion. This cassette, which my mother referred to as “Dengê Dedê” (“the voice of Dedê” in Kurdish—what we called my grandmother), was one of her most treasured possessions. These moments filled me with discomfort, as they revealed the depth of sadness my mother felt, which I found difficult to witness, while simultaneously offering her a moment of connection and mourning.

As time went by, the memory of those moments faded from my mind. However, years later, while conducting interviews with so-called guest workers about their means of communication, many spoke of how they relied on analog cassette recordings to stay connected with their families in Turkey: sending these messages to bridge the distance (Alpagu, 2021). I was reminded of the shared moment with my Dedê, my mother, and me through Dedê’s voice. This personal memory became an entry point into reflecting on the audio letters in family archives and their connection to memory, loss, and grief across generations.

Today, digital technologies like WhatsApp have become integral to daily communication, especially during times of migration and mobility, allowing people to easily reconnect regularly. However, during the labor migration from Turkey to central European countries, such as Austria and Germany in the 1960s and 1980s, options for communication were limited. Telephone calls were expensive, and many households lacked telephones. In addition, many migrants were illiterate, making written letters inaccessible. As an alternative, migrants recorded their voices on tape recorders to convey messages to their families (Alpagu, 2021, 2024; Thomson, 2011).

Based on audio letter recordings and a biographical-narrative interview (Rosenthal, 2018) I conducted with Selma Kayhan, a woman who migrated to Austria in the 1970s, this article explores the complexities of audio recordings as carriers of memory. Audio letters, those that are embedded in family archives, reveal the ambivalence of memory as both a connective and disruptive force. While they offer an intimate and emotional form of communication, they do not necessarily evoke positive feelings alone or bridge emotional distances (Alpagu, 2024). Instead, they can reinforce unresolved pain and serve as persistent reminders of the past. Consequently, this article examines audio letters not only as a means of communication but also as carriers of memories that are fluid (Hirsch and Spitzer, 2023), conflicting, and deeply subjective, shaped by emotions across time, place, and generations. This article is framed by the following questions: What role does the family audio letter play in relation to one’s biography across time? In what ways do family members’ memories diverge from an individual’s own recollections and why? How do melancholia and mourning shape an individual’s memories linked to the audio letter? Overall, this article reflects on how family memories are constructed, how subjectivity influences omissions, reinterpretations, and expectations, and how emotions are central to this dynamic.

An unfinished memorial—Countermemorial (Gegendenkmal)—is a concept that was presented in the work of Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka to counter the implicit glorification of war represented by traditional war memorials. Reflecting on this memorial, Angelika Bammer (2023) questions whether the resolution promised by mourning is always the best way to cope with loss, especially when the grief it brings cannot be fully resolved. She suggests that leaving a loss open—like carrying a wound that never fully heals—can itself be a form of resolution. Sometimes, we may need or even desire to preserve certain aspects of the past in a state of melancholy rather than attempt to overcome them through the process of mourning. Following Bammer, I argue that preserving audio letters serves as an open-ended act of mourning. This is particularly crucial when the possibilities for reconciliation or closure are limited or lacking.

For the purposes of this analysis, two methodological approaches are employed: biographical case reconstruction through an interview (Rosenthal, 2018) and hermeneutic analysis (Oevermann et al., 1979). The biographical case reconstruction serves a dual function: first, it uncovers the meaning of the archival material to the interviewee and its connection to her biography; second, it allows for a meta-level of analysis that illuminates how biographies are constructed both within familial micro-contexts and within the broader sociocultural environment in which the interviewee was born, raised, and currently lives. The hermeneutic analysis, on the other hand, facilitates the interpretation of the latent meanings embedded in what is said—and unsaid—and the manner in which it is communicated. The audio letters introduce an additional analytical dimension. The auditory qualities of these letters convey emotions and contradictions that would remain inaccessible through written correspondence alone. To address this complexity, I employ a sequential analysis. This approach attends to the order of speech—who speaks, when, and in what manner—as well as pauses, interruptions, cuts, and the surrounding atmosphere, considering how each of these elements influences the meaning of the content (Alpagu, 2021, 2024). Moreover, through this act of analytical juxtaposition, this research includes a temporal dimension (the 1980s and the present) that serves as a backdrop to the contrasting recollections of my interviewee and those of her family members, thereby revealing the deeply subjective and often fragmented nature of memory.

This article is divided into three sections. I start with an analysis of Selma’s biography, which is followed by an interpretation of the audio letter sent to her in Austria by her family in Turkey in the early 1980s. This is followed by an analysis of the audio letter sent to her in Austria by her family in Turkey in the early 1980s. I then juxtapose these two narratives to underscore the role of letters as both tools of communication and carriers of memory, revealing their capacity to sustain unresolved mourning across time, place, and generations.

A childhood in flux—“From then on, we started, and I don’t know how it ended”

I met Selma Kayhan through a colleague who had heard about my research on family archiving practices in multimedia communication. I conducted a biographical-narrative interview with Selma, during which she shared three analog audio letters alongside her life story. After offering a narrative prompt, inviting her to start from any point she wished to talk about her life story, Selma responded that it was best to “start with the birth, otherwise, it would be incomplete.” She began by recounting her birth in a northern Turkish city, where, at only a few days old, she was “given up for adoption” to relatives unable to have biological children. Her words conveyed a sense of loss, foreshadowing the complexity of her narrative. She then concluded with laughter “from then on, we started, and I don’t know how it ended,” showing that what happened has not yet been resolved. In addition, this phrase exemplifies Selma’s tendency to mark her life in fragmented stages, often summing up painful experiences with short, resigned expressions. This way of speaking hints at her discomfort with delving too deeply into her past and serves as a means of speaking about troubled experiences.

The difficult feelings she has surrounding her adoption are not just about being “given up for adoption” as a newborn; they are also about the violent way she discovered she was not her parents’ biological child. At the time, she was staying with her relatives while her mother was away. She described the moments before this revelation as carefree: “I was being playful and spoiled.” Then, suddenly, the relative taking care of her grabbed her: “She grabbed my arm, then said, you are, uhm, I mean, the daughter of this and that, she said to me. Not hers [adoptive mother], she said.” Selma was still a preschool-aged child: “I was very, very young.” As she recounted this moment, it was as if she were reliving it. She stuttered and stopped as though struggling to remember the exact moment of what happened and what the relative had said. Not only Selma, but I also felt the same shock, as if we were both reliving the moment, revealing the continued immediacy of these memories. I started to stutter myself:

As such, Selma knew from an early age that she was adopted. Her biological parents lived in the village, while she stayed with her adoptive parents in the city. She would see her biological parents only once a year, as the distance was further exacerbated by the lack of infrastructure: there was no proper road to the village. She described her biological father as “cold and distant” and she did not share any memories of him with me. Her memories of her biological mother, however, are painful. She recalled a violent episode from her childhood when she was around 7 years old. While alone with her mother, Selma was forced to call her “mother.” Selma remembers: “(. . .) My mother beat me a lot to make me call her ‘mother.’ In the end, out of fear, I said ‘mother’ [5] and after that, they never cared for me [18, tearfully].” The emphasis on “a lot,” the long pauses—5 seconds, then 18—and the tears, all reveal the depth of her wounds from being abandoned. The pain is not only in the memory of being beaten, but also in her repeated statement: “they did not take care of me.” Selma repeated this sentiment throughout the interview. The sharpness of her pain is intensified by the powerlessness she describes—being beaten, forced to obey, compelled to call someone “mother,” yet still receiving no care in return. When recounting that she used the term “mother” out of fear, she added, “But never, from my heart, did I say ‘mother’ willingly,” a remark that underscores the dissonance between coerced terms of address and the absence of genuine emotional recognition.

On the surface, this memory may appear as simple maternal neglect. However, understanding the background of their story reveals the depth of the trauma both Selma and her mother had faced. Years later, as an adult, Selma asked her mother, “Why did you give me away? Was I too much?” Her mother had only been 16 when she gave birth to Selma. The relatives who pressured her to give Selma away told her that if she did not, the baby would die. Out of fear for her child’s life, she agreed to the adoption of her firstborn. Selma’s account reveals her confusion and ambivalence toward her mother’s response: “How true or false this is, I don’t know. I only know what she told me. She gave me away like that. Then never cared later [3, sniffs].” This divergent experience of the two women seems to explain the varying and conflicting recollections between Selma’s account of events and the versions her family provides through the recordings, as I will discuss later.

From a child’s perspective, maternal protection is foundational. Selma’s repeated question—“Was I too much?”—underscores the unresolved wound left by this early separation. Yet, when viewed against the sociocultural constraints faced by women at the time, her mother’s limited agency becomes more apparent. While her fear may seem rational from an adult perspective, Selma’s childhood experience was defined by a profound sense of abandonment. This tension between adult rationality and a child’s emotional reality illustrates the enduring impact of their separation. This belated attempt to reclaim motherhood encapsulates the powerlessness both women experienced—her mother, in trying to restore a lost bond, and Selma, in complying out of fear rather than affection. This moment seems like a turning point in their relationship: a shared state of vulnerability in which the impossibility of repairing their bond became apparent. It may have been another instance, following the initial act of adoption, in which her mother recognized her own powerlessness. Although she may have sought reconnection, the effort took the form of a forced mother–daughter dynamic, revealing that such bonds cannot be compelled—and perhaps that it was already too late. Drawing on Bammer’s (2023) reflections on melancholia, this moment signifies not only loss but also the recognition that some ruptures remain irreparable.

Not all of Selma’s memories were painful; there were also instances of a “good childhood.” One of the key reasons for this was her grandmother—the mother of her adoptive mother—who emerged as the only consistent caregiver in her life. Unlike Selma’s mothers, her grandmother was a woman with influence in the family. “When I was twelve, my grandmother died, and that’s when the turmoil began,” Selma recalled. The loss of this central caregiver stripped away the last remaining sense of security in her childhood. As an adopted child, Selma’s role within the family had always been uncertain. But with her grandmother’s passing her place became even more precarious, especially as conflicts over inheritance arose. Her adoptive mother was kind to her but could not protect her the way she wanted to. Growing up in such a confusing and conflicted atmosphere, Selma eventually found her own way of “running away”—through marrying a migrant living in Austria.

In her twenties, in the late 1970s, she married her current husband, who was already living in Austria. They barely knew each other. Her decision to marry was driven less by love or compatibility and more by a desire “(. . .) to run away from that atmosphere (. . .) I was not thinking at all, only to run away from city X [her hometown], only to run away (. . .).” Particularly, women see marriage as a way to “escape” violent domestic situations. Across two generations, three women were constrained by patriarchal structures, and Selma, the youngest of the three, ultimately married and migrated as a way of escaping her situation.

Memory construction after migration

Migration to Austria marked a significant turning point for Selma, bringing both liberation and isolation. Without a support system or any relatives (other than her husband) in Austria, she faced considerable challenges. Despite these constraints, Selma did not see herself as powerless; instead, she exercised subtle agency by making choices within the narrow confines of patriarchal structures. Although she initially considered working, she ultimately decided against it. This decision was influenced by her husband’s refusal to share child-rearing responsibilities or contribute financially to childcare, as well as her strong desire to become a mother. Rather than using her “entire salary to cover daycare costs,” Selma chose to stay home and care for their children. Selma was born into an unsupportive family dynamic and later confronted restrictions imposed by her husband and Austria’s patriarchal system, which lacked childcare services. These challenges were further intensified by restrictive migration policies that strictly regulated families (Hahn, 2023; Stokes, 2022).

Her migration also re-opened conflicts with her biological family of origin. She recalled: “I came to Europe (. . .) I think they needed some money, after that, they strove to get close to me, but I didn’t allow them to be [determined].” Reflecting on her birth family’s attempts to reconnect in this quote, she initially describes feeling that they were motivated by financial interests. This perception highlights the absence of an emotional bond and the lack of trust caused by her early separation from them. Moreover, the statement “I think they needed some money, they strove to get close to me” captures how migration can transform family ties into economic dependencies, adding new layers of ambivalence. Selma could experience feelings of anger and disappointment as a result of thinking that her neglectful family contacted her with the intention of requesting and receiving financial support. By referring to her family as “they,” Selma signals a sense of distance—revealing that she does not feel she belongs to them. Her determined refusal to reconnect—“But I didn’t allow them to be”—suggests an effort to assert boundaries, an act of agency that was unavailable to her as a child and young woman in Turkey. Now, as an adult and from a geographical distance, she can decide how to set boundaries.

Although Selma rejected contact with her biological family for some time after arriving in Austria, she did eventually invest in a telephone so that she could speak with her adoptive mother. Reflecting on these conversations, she said, “I didn’t know anything, [sniffles] like . . . I didn’t know how to cook, and I wasn’t familiar with many household tasks.” Over the phone, Selma’s mother taught her how to manage her household. This dynamic shows that Selma’s choice to communicate was influenced not only by her desire for connection but also by the closeness and quality of her relationship with her mother—one that was nurturing and emotionally supportive.

By contrast, the unresolved tensions with her family of origin were crystallized through their long-distance communication: via an audio letter—analyzed in the next section—they sent her 3 years after her migration:

“My younger sister wrote a letter. She got my address from somewhere. I started exchanging letters with her. (. . .) Then my [biological] family sent me a letter as a favor. I had been married for three years; they had put their voices on a cassette tape and had sent it to me. I didn’t send a response, I was angry at the time, I mean, why did they send it? But I didn’t send a response.”

Here, Selma presents her need to maintain a certain distance from her family of origin by saying “She got my address from somewhere,” making it clear that they were not in touch. This statement notes the starting point of her re-established communication with her family. The family’s search for her address symbolizes an effort to re-establish a broken bond. However, Selma’s initial reaction was one of anger: “I didn’t send a response.” By saying that she was married for 3 years, she might be implying that they waited too long to contact her. This implication is also evidenced in her wondering why they would send a voice recording. While she says that she was angry “at the time,” the fact that she also raised her voice and stressed what she said during our interview, demonstrates that the event had left a strong imprint on her: that her feelings of anger persist. When we consider that Selma married to “run away” from her family, her anger is more understandable. All these efforts of her family are therefore accompanied by past pain, which may have even intensified with migration. For Selma, this recording also became a reminder of the burdens of the past and unresolved emotional issues.

I asked her about what it was like for her to first listen to the letter:

“The first time I listened to it, I felt sad, obviously. You know, even though I pretended I didn’t want to, when they sent it to me like that, I was very saddened [2]. I felt sad, I mean, but I didn’t send them a response; I didn’t write it either [determined]. So that they wouldn’t know that I was thinking like that.”

Filled with ambivalence, Selma experienced sadness, anger, and determination. This response suggests that she did not want her family to know how she truly felt or what she was thinking; in other words, she was reluctant to reveal her vulnerability, which stemmed from a lack of trust in her family of origin. As we will see later through the voices of her family members, they also struggled to express their true feelings and vulnerabilities, highlighting a deep gap in trust and a disconnection among them.

Selma also talked about the last time she listened to the recording. During this account, she reflected on it as a kind of archival material, probably because of her understanding of my research interests and why I contacted her in the first place:

“I listened to it a few times, and I kept it, so it wouldn’t vanish with me, to keep the memory of it. Last time, I listened to it (. . .) I felt very sad then [laughs out loud nervously]. The thing is also my brother was a child at the time, the one who died (. . .). I felt very sad to hear their voices again [laughs] (. . .) I didn’t listen to it completely (. . .). I would like to listen to it, but now I get very sad, also because of my situation [her illness], I’m destroying myself listening to them. I would like to listen to it, uhm uhm I’m taking chemo.”

Selma’s relationship to the cassette evolved over time: moving from initial curiosity—prompted by the desire to reconnect with her family—to painful ambivalence as the voices on the tape evoked sadness, anger, longing, and unresolved grief. Her most recent listen, prompted by my research, brought fresh grief. “I want to listen,” she says, “but I cry too much. I’m destroying myself when I listen.” Illness has intensified her emotional vulnerability, rendering the cassette both a source of solace and a reminder of irredeemable loss. In addition, her two younger brothers and her mother are now deceased. Yet, she has kept the cassette—an object that both preserves the connection and embodies its contradictions. The act of keeping the tape without responding can be interpreted as a refusal of closure, echoing Bammer’s argument that melancholia can serve as a generative counter-state to the demand for resolution.

The degree of her frustration and anger is seen in her memory about the content of the letter:

Selma recalled her mother’s letter as accusatory and demanding. She described her mother’s version of the story as reversed, implying that her mother perceived Selma—not herself—as the one who had initially abandoned or left. The way Selma recalls the letter’s content includes repeated filler words such as “I mean,” “I don’t know,” and “things like that,” which reveal a sense of uneasiness surrounding her memory of the letter.

In the following, I will provide an analysis of the audio letter that shows conflicting and contradictory memories. Unlike Selma, her family members talk about shared memories in the recording. I argue that these conflicting memories are one of the reasons why she has kept this material. Despite her pain and difficult family history, this letter signifies to her that she was not alone; she was loved, she was once seen as part of the family, they cared for her in their own way. As such, the letter serves as Selma’s missing link to her family, a reminder of a lifelong melancholia that will likely remain unresolved (Bammer, 2023).

Singing and listening to music: practices of family-making and shared grief

I received three audio recordings from Selma: One audio letter was recorded and sent by her birth mother and three siblings, and two additional recordings were sent to her husband by his family of origin. All the recordings date back to the early 1980s. In the following analysis, I will focus on the audio letter from Selma’s family of origin.

The recording is divided into two parts: Side A, lasting 29 minutes and 42 seconds, and Side B, with a duration of 29 minutes and 15 seconds. In this recording, Selma’s family members engage in conversation, sing, and play gurbet [abroad] songs in—songs that convey the emotional experiences of living far from one’s home, homeland, or loved ones. The recording conveys a sense of careful preparation, distinguishing it from other audio letters I have listened to and analyzed so far, which often sound spontaneous. Up to this point, the recordings were made over previous cassette recordings, with songs appearing accidentally or coincidentally between conversations. But here, the recording feels more deliberate: they decide when to speak, when to sing, and when to play a song, making their content and biographical references particularly significant.

Side A contains very limited conversation; it is rather like a mixtape of very emotional songs. It opens with Selma’s young brother, of primary-school age, greeting her and her husband before announcing that he will sing. He sounds nervous and his speech resembles a schoolchild reciting a poem at the request of a teacher: formal, monotonous, and emotionally restrained. He sings three songs in a row, which are deeply sentimental, quite contrary to his young voice. His singing is followed by professionally recorded songs. First, “I Can’t Go Back to My Turkey” plays, which is about the impossibility of return. This song is followed by another song preoccupied with fate and human helplessness. The heavy atmosphere is then lightened briefly by her siblings laughing and singing playfully. After a small audio cut, a lament begins: “What a fate, bad fate. I am crying without tears. I have no companion. I have nobody to talk with.” This track seamlessly transitions into another with a similar theme, reinforcing the tape’s overarching atmosphere of sorrow and continuity.

Side A of the cassette ends with two particularly meaningful songs that are deeply connected to the family’s biography; they are about motherhood and being emotionally close despite the geographical distance. One is called “Mother’s Heart” and is written from a child’s perspective:

“My mother, I have called you on every painful day, you have cherished me for years, I will never forget you, my mother, my mother, forgive me if I have any sin. Even if you are gone, your heart lives with me.”

Interestingly, in the song, it is the child who asks the mother’s forgiveness for any sins they may have committed. The child recalls the mother as hardworking and selfless—one who has suffered significantly and at length and is a “victim” of her circumstances. When we think of Selma’s biography, this song’s reversal of roles adds another layer of complexity to the family’s unspoken tensions. We could argue that, through the song, Selma’s mother is attempting to explain herself. However, because the roles are reversed in the lyrics, this may cause Selma more anger, making it difficult to reconnect. Without a cut, another song follows which also contains the topics of feeling lonely and devastated because of separation. After this song, for the first time, Selma’s mother talks: “My dear daughter Selma [3] I am far away but [2] I want to deliver my voice to you through the band.”

Her voice is monotone, punctuated by extended pauses, while indistinct conversation is audible in the background. The other family members remain notably quiet, seemingly careful not to overtake her voice. Through her taped message, Selma’s mother addresses the challenge of overcoming distance. The hesitant delivery does not signal a lack of emotion but rather suggests the presence of intense, deeply buried feelings that she has difficulties articulating. She then begins to sing an anonymous song: “(. . .) Death is Allah’s will, but if it weren’t for the separation (. . .) Fate has separated us. Both of us are fated to be far away. May Allah bring us together (. . .).” The lyrics draw a distinction between death, as an inevitable divine decree, and separation, framed here as a human condition made more painful by its avoidability. At the same time, the song attributes their separation to an inescapable fate, absolving both mother and daughter of agency in the matter. By invoking Allah as the only possible agent of reunion, Selma’s mother reinforces her sense of powerlessness. The recording of Side A ends abruptly after the song, leaving this unresolved expression of longing as its closing sentiment.

Interestingly, even family members who remained in Turkey—outside the direct experience of gurbet—performed gurbet songs. This underscores the far-reaching impact of migration on the entire family and highlights the phenomenon of “skipped mourning” (Usak, 2024) whereby migrants, due to the profound changes and challenges brought on by migration, had to forgo a mourning process. More broadly, individuals from this socioeconomic background lacked both the resources and awareness for professional therapeutic engagement with trauma, yet they developed alternative means of grieving. These recordings reveal how music functioned as an emotional bridge, enabling difficult family issues to be communicated across geographical distance. The juxtaposition of restrained speech with deeply affective songs points to a complex negotiation of grief, longing, and reconciliation. Through gurbet songs, the family articulated what they could not otherwise voice, creating a sonic archive of collective memory that simultaneously conceals and conveys shared suffering, showing the central role of emotion in the reconstruction of memory. Yet, given Selma’s biography, these songs did not only help to generate closeness; rather, they underscored the family’s pain, inverted roles, and projected latent accusations onto Selma, ultimately amplifying distance and anger. In this sense, music operated ambivalently—not only as an emotional bridge across distance, but also as a medium through which unresolved tensions were voiced, reinforcing alienation instead of reconciliation.

The ambivalence of memory: conflict, pain, and reconnection

Side B of the cassette is dominated by conversation, with occasional singing interspersed. As the recording progresses, the family grows more comfortable, exchanging thoughts, correcting mispronunciations, debating who should sing next, and narrating their actions, while the background noise of her brothers’ laughter enriches the auditory texture. These elements give the recording a vivid, almost tangible quality that draws the listener into their shared interactions. Yet a sense of formality lingers, reminiscent of a school recital, creating a performance marked less by intimacy than by nervous restraint. In contrast to Selma’s own recollections, which emphasize her suffering at being abandoned as an infant, her family highlights shared memories with her. What functions for them as a gesture of reconnection, for Selma evokes painful feelings and a resistance to engage, as I will discuss.

Following a brief negotiation regarding who should speak first, her sister begins:

“Here is your sister Aylin. My precious sister (. . .). Two years have passed my beloved sister. Since we cannot fulfill our longing and yearning, we are recording our voices with tape [3]. We all gathered together (. . .) we want to transfer our voice.”

The repeated use of kinship terms (“sister,” “my precious sister,” “my beloved sister”) foregrounds both intimacy and distance: the speaker overcompensates for physical absence by layering endearments. The phrasing, “since we cannot fulfill our longing and yearning,” frames the cassette not merely as a message but as a substitute presence, a way to stand in for the bodily and emotional closeness disrupted by migration. The declaration “we all gathered (. . .) we want to transfer our voice” emphasizes the collective nature of the act: the family consciously produces an auditory trace of togetherness to be delivered across distance. In this sense, the tape functions simultaneously as ritual, performance, and surrogate encounter, making absence audible while attempting to transform it into a form of presence.

Aylin then names those present. In a moment of confusion, she mistakenly says her brother’s name instead of her own, prompting laughter in the background. This slip marks a subtle rupture in the otherwise structured speech, allowing a glimpse of her genuine excitement despite efforts at suppression. The tension between formality and spontaneous emotion is clear as she quickly shifts the conversation to include others, urging them “to talk, too.” This not only signals discomfort but also highlights her attempt to distribute the interaction. As the recording continues, the participants reference memories of people and places without elaboration, indicating a deeply shared history that requires no explanation. This familiarity becomes particularly evident when her sister reminisces:

“Do you remember our old days? We used to gather together until dawn. Ahhhh Selma my beloved sister ahh now we are all gathered together again, but unfortunately you are not among us [2] we always remember you when we get together, we always remember these days we spent together, and we talk about them [3].”

This passage shows an interplay between nostalgia, loss, and collective memory. Aylin recalls the joy of past gatherings, evoking a sense of warmth and intimacy that contrasts sharply with the present absence of Selma, “the beloved sister.” By addressing her directly, Aylin intensifies the emotional weight of Selma’s absence. Repetition of the word “remember” underscores memory’s dual role: sustaining bonds while simultaneously highlighting absence. At the same time, recalling past experiences ensures that Selma remains symbolically present, demonstrating how gatherings bring joy while also acting as a reminder of who is not there.

In my interview with Selma, however, she described her family of origin as if she had not shared significant experiences with them. This discrepancy underscores the conflicting and contradictory recollections surrounding their connection. The time gap between accounts is crucial: the audio letter, recorded in the early 1980s, reflects memories of childhood and youth, whereas Selma’s present perspective has been shaped by decades of intervening experience. Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer (2023) argue that memory is always, at its core, rooted in the present: “We do not recall the past, but we create the past we need in the present” (p. 107). The contrast between Selma’s memories and her family’s recording highlights the subjectivity of memory and the emotional forces that shape perceptions of past events.

For Selma, listening to these glimpses of daily life and emotional invitations was not comforting but wounding. The cassette reopened her pain with renewed intensity. As she explained, listening to the recording “destroys” her. This statement collapses temporalities, layering fresh suffering onto old wounds. Angelika Bammer (2023), drawing on Nicole Loraux’s (1998) concept of “nonoblivion,” describes a state of remembering that unfolds in its own temporality—neither allowing the relief of forgetting nor imposing the full weight of memory, but instead hovering in an ambiguous act of consciously remembering not to forget. For Loraux, this ambiguity has transformative potential, a stance Donna Haraway (2016) describes as “staying with the trouble,” resisting both resignation and closure. Yet in this case, the family’s attempt to reconnect reactivated Selma’s long-standing sense of never having been fully part of the family—feelings rooted in her being “given away” as an infant and in the fact that their memories, and sentiments attached to them, contradict her own. Even Aylin’s slip—mistakenly taking her brother’s name—can be read, in a Freudian sense, as a “slippery” moment that reveals the inseparability of the siblings, a closeness Selma has never felt.

One moment in the recording makes Selma’s anger and refusal to reconcile particularly understandable. This is the part that explains why Selma remembers the letter as accusatory. The letter points out that she replied to her adoptive mother but not to them and carries an undercurrent of jealousy and blame. It echoes exactly what Selma recalled in our interview: “no matter what happens, the real family [emphasis added] keeps contact.” Her family repeatedly asks her to visit, insisting they cannot travel such a long distance. It explains why Selma thought that they were contacting her because they needed money. Implicit in their words is the assumption that because she lives in Europe, she has mobility and financial means. More deeply, their appeals reveal an unspoken expectation: although Selma was “given up for adoption,” it is now her responsibility to restore the connection—both by visiting them and by reintegrating into her biological family. This unresolved tension, between having been given away and being expected to return, seems to be one of the key conflicts that kept them apart. On both Selma’s side and that of her family of origin, the tension and conflict remain unresolved.

Bammer (2023) points out that in psychoanalysis discourses, melancholia is often interpreted as a form of failure. This reading is rooted in Freud’s distinction in “Mourning and Melancholia,” where mourning is seen as a successful process of coming to terms with loss, while melancholia signals an inability to let go. Such binaries leave little room for unresolved or ambivalent relationships with the past. In Selma’s case, resistance is tied to the impossibility of closure, given that her family speaks as if her trauma of abandonment never occurred. To paraphrase Usak (2024), Selma has skipped mourning many times, and she does not seem to have the time, energy, resources, and—most importantly—the emotional strength to find closure. She lives in a state of melancholia. Yet rather than seeing this as failure, her condition suggests a more complex truth: some losses cannot be fully resolved, and some wounds remain ever-present. In this way, the cassette exemplifies the ambivalence of memory itself: while it preserves family intimacy and continuity for some, it simultaneously deepens separation and pain for others, revealing how remembrance can both connect and wound.

Conclusion—echoes of loss: memory, reconciliation, and the limits of healing

In this article, I have juxtaposed data from two sources—audio letter recordings and a biographical-narrative interview—taken from two temporal moments, the 1980s and today. I then analyzed this data by triangulating findings using two interpretative methods: biographical case reconstruction (Rosenthal, 2018) and hermeneutic analysis (Oevermann et al., 1979) by applying sequential analysis (Rosenthal, 2018; Alpagu, 2021, 2024).

Three questions guided this research. I first asked: What role does the family audio letter play in relation to one’s biography across time? Comparing Selma’s biography with the family’s audio letter illuminates why she felt distressed both when she first listened to the recording and when revisiting it decades later. While the recording conveys family intimacy through speech and song, these expressions clash with Selma’s own feelings of exclusion. Her adoption left unresolved pain that resurfaces whenever she listens to the letter. This conflict produces fragmented and divergent memories, intensified by the loss of her mother and brothers as well as her current illness. More than a simple memory object, the cassette becomes an affective archive, preserving the voices of the deceased while entangling the past with the present. The cassette stands as both an acknowledgment of Selma’s early trauma and a record of her family’s attempt—however flawed—to reconnect. More than a medium, the cassette is a testament to vulnerability, unresolved grief, and the complexity of remembrance. Unlike written letters, its materiality has preserved the living presence of absent family members, making the past palpably present: a reminder that some bonds endure—even when they hurt.

My second research question asked: In what ways do family members’ memories diverge from an individual’s own recollections, and why? Through Selma’s recollections and those of her family, I have explored not only different modes of memory narration but also the relationship between personal recollection and family memory. Such memories are fluid (Hirsch and Spitzer, 2023) and subjective, shaped by emotions connected to experiences across time, generations, and spaces. My analysis has shown that emotions shape how events are remembered, particularly when trauma and painful experiences remain unspoken and unresolved. Such silences create lasting wounds that persist as melancholia. Moreover, the audio letter emerges as an ambivalent object of memory—both connecting and unsettling. It testifies to care and a desire for reconnection, yet it also reactivates unresolved grief and deepens Selma’s sense of exclusion. As such, it embodies the contradictions of familial memory: love intertwined with guilt, intimacy connected with distance.

My final research question asked: How do melancholia and mourning shape an individual’s memories linked to the family audio letter? Selma’s decision to keep the recording, but not respond to it, reflects what Loraux (1998) terms an act of nonoblivion: a refusal to forget, paired with the recognition that reconciliation is no longer possible. Selma’s insistence—“so they wouldn’t vanish with me”—signals her refusal to let these voices go, even as they evoke suffering. Healing is not always possible, nor necessarily desirable. Some wounds do not close; they persist as part of one’s lived experience (Bammer, 2023). Selma “stays with the trouble,” inhabiting a state of open mourning: of melancholia. This is not a failure to move beyond the past but evidence that coming to terms with trauma—especially when silenced—is not always reducible to resolution or closure. Sometimes the persistence of the wound is itself a form of survival: a way of living with what cannot be repaired. In this sense, the audio letter functions as an open-ended practice of mourning, an object resisting closure, showing that memory objects do not only evoke closeness or comfort but can equally create distance and conflict: where healing may lie not in closure but in the endurance of complexity. Selma’s story shows how personal archives become fragile spaces where love, anger, and longing intersect, shaping how we remember and what we choose not to forget.