Yes, it’s weird and tasteless – but I’d love to hear Alexa mimic my late mother’s voice

Within weeks of her death, I could not remember my mum’s voice. The very first voice I recognised was the very first voice I had forgotten

In a few days, it is the 24th anniversary of my mum’s death. It is unimaginable that it’s pretty much a quarter of a century since we last saw each other. Decades have passed since we spoke about anything, since I would awkwardly avoid questions about my private life, and since we shared our distaste for certain celebrities, celebrated our same choices in easy-listening music, and squabbled over what to watch on TV.

Losing any loved one early is tough, but losing the person who brought you into the world is especially profound and cruel.

Memories help soften the sadness, though. Such as a very young me crying when she had a driving lesson as I thought she was leaving home forever, comically bad holidays on the Isle of Wight, her anger at someone mistaking her “fashionable” highlights for grey hair, her love of Abba, the time she accidentally ended up watching a match at Stamford Bridge when she had only gone to Chelsea to look at its shops, or when she would reassure me that, yes, we were nearly there as we drove to York from Southampton. We had just passed Winchester.

Her love of the beach, her celebrated inability to take a decent photograph, the pride she felt at owning a car, “the first thing of my own”. The pain when she falsely hoped her illness was fading. A few weeks later, barely into middle age, she was gone forever.

All the memories, the likes and dislikes, the smells, the letters she left for us, the stories and the bad photographs are there. One thing has always been missing, though, and that’s her voice.

Within weeks of her death, I could not remember my mum’s voice. With her unremarkable Hampshire accent, it wasn’t a voice that many would notice – except I did, because it was hers. But try as I might, within days of her passing, I could not remember how she sounded. The very first voice I recognised was the very first voice I had forgotten.

It never occurred to me that your memory could lose someone’s – anyone’s – voice, let alone your mother’s, after their passing. At first, I thought it was some grim and temporary trick of mourning, and that it would eventually come back to me. But it never has and it never will. Even when she appears in my dreams, my mum never speaks.

Sadly, we have no recordings. One glorious old cassette of me and my brother playing around when she asked us to wash and wipe up after tea has long been lost, and she died before the smartphone age and its instant, easy, everyday access to video and audio.

If we had been able to keep just 60 seconds of recorded audio, it now turns out we could have got Mum to speak through Alexa, which is probably the strangest sentence I will ever write.

The news that Amazon has developed a feature that will enable the voice assistant to start using the voices of the dead is, at first glance, creepy, tasteless and deeply sinister. If anything says the future is going to be awful, then this is it.

However, as disturbing as the idea is, I cannot help thinking that if I had the chance, I might just use it. The prospect of my mum reading a bedtime story to the grandchildren she never saw or introducing a song from my back catalogue of “dad music” is decidedly weird, but there is also something about it – and I am not sure I like myself for saying this – that appeals.

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I would love to hear mum’s voice once again, I really would. And she would love the fact that her voice would sound a lot younger than if she was still around today.

Amazon is pulling at our heartstrings by doing this, but in our tech-savvy age, it is something that will become an option for many. And the more commonplace it becomes, the less creepy it will seem.

It also appeals to me on one other level; not being able to remember my mum’s voice has always made me feel guilty and like a bit of a failed son. It makes me think that I am somehow not remembering her properly, that she deserved more than a forgetful child. It would make the memory of her seem complete, and confirm that she will never be forgotten.

It is creepy, it is tasteless and it really is deeply sinister. But, I can’t help myself; Alexa, play my mum.