And then there is music

Photo by Providence Doucet on Unsplash

When I was growing up, there was always music. The story goes that after I was born, my mother would set me on top of the stereo speakers. She would put on some orchestral music and I would sleep through it. She remembers that music kept me content.

I was a first child so all of the mistakes you can make were made with me. My mother grew up in her grandfather’s house. Her parents divorced after she was eleven. Her mother worked and left her two girls with her father. According to my mother, my great-grandfather was a cranky old man. His wife had already died before the girls came to his house. I believe he was still grieving. 

Many of the tensions between my great-grandfather and my mother was because she was feckless, beautiful, and already a star in her little town in Idaho. She had a beautiful voice and was the musical lead in “Oklahoma,” and other musicals. My father met my mother when she was involved with a production. She was the star and he was the lead violinist.

It sounds almost like a romance novel except the novel ends when the boy gets the girl. The novels never go into the problems that happen when girl finds out that boy can’t keep a job or when boy finds out that girl is fertile. She gave birth to nine children.

The soundtrack of my mother’s life was “The Sound of Music.” She taught us all the songs and we would sing “Do-re-mi” until it was perfect. My father’s soundtrack was from “The Fiddler on the Roof.” It was a sad day when the arthritis in his hands became so bad that he couldn’t play anymore. His violin was the one possession of his childhood that he kept.

My mother, now in her 80s, has lost her singing voice.

My great-grandfather died when I was five. There are pictures of him holding me in his arms with a proud smile on his face. My only memory of him was a week before his death. He was lying in bed, old and frail, with a huge comforter tucked around him. My mother brought me in to see him and she sat me on his bed.

He touched my hand and said, “Sing for me.”

I was shy and looked at my mother and she told me to sing “my little pussy cat.”

So in the clear tones of early childhood I sang–

I love my little pussy cat
I love his soft soft fur
And when I hold him carefully
He says purr, purr, purr

I remember a tear in my great-grandfather’s eye. I think he patted my hand and my mother sent me from the room. 

There was a tight connection between me and him that I feel even today.

This is not the only time I have sung someone to the next world.

When my husband, Otto, was dying in a hospital bed. My brother and I opened the window so he could see the sky, the trees, and the birds. Otto loved the birds. He knew the names of all of them and loved to feed them.

My brother and I sang the old hymns for hours as my step-daughter held my husband’s hand. Neither my brother and I have ever sang professionally, but we had sung in church choirs. Although we were sad, knowing that we were losing him, the energy in the room turned from sadness to something better.

I do have the education to talk about the tones and textures of sound and how it can calm or agitate us. But that is only words. Music is more than words. It is sound energy that touches our emotions. No word can describe what it can do for us.

So I came into the world with sound and one day I will leave the same way.