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As we’ve talked about here in the past, the grieving process after losing someone incredibly important in your life, for many, never really ends. You just learn to move forward (because staying stagnant will hurt more), and find comfort in the memories that you were able to create with that person. But one memory that becomes harder to hold onto as the years pass is the true sound of your loved one’s voice.
For Kelly Rowland, 37, the realization of that, in reference to the death of her mother, caused her to break down in tears while coaching a contestant on the Australian version of The Voice recently. She is a coach on the series.
During a mentoring session with contestant Hannah Pearce, the young singer told Rowland about how the song she was tasked with singing that week made her think of her father, who had passed away when she was a child.
“After so many years, you forget someone’s voice. I remember what he looks like but…” she said before her voice cut off as she realized Rowland started tearing up.
“I’m sorry I’m crying, because you just said something so profound,” the star replied. “I miss my mom’s voice. I get that. That’s so true. You do forget their voice.”
In a confessional moment with the camera, the former Destiny’s Child member said their conversation reopened the wounds of losing her mom.
“When she brought up not forgetting that voice, I didn’t know that it was going to pull the emotion that it did,” she said.
“I grieve now for three years the loss of my mom. And that’s the greatest loss of my life,” she added. “Of course, I don’t want to forget her voice.”
As Rowland tried to get back to the mentoring session with Pearce and two other contestants, she couldn’t hold the tears back and had to step out for a moment.
“I forgot the sound of her voice,” Rowland said between tears to someone from her team. “She just made me think about that. You do forget the sound of their voice…it was a good one.”
Rowland lost her mother, Doris Garrison, back in 2014. Her death came just two and a half weeks after the star had given birth to her first child, son Titan.
In a previous chat with 60 Minutes from 2017, Rowland said of the loss, “It was hard because I’d just watched my son come into this world and I actually watched her go.”
“There’s not a day that goes by I don’t think of her,” she added.
