Mom and Music

Since Gray and Tanner have come along my thoughts on Mother's day tend to focus mostly on Michele.  But still, every year, my thoughts come back to my mom as well.  I suppose they linger there most days for at least a bit.  Even after 16 years I still have trouble coming to terms some times with the notion she is gone, but that is another post for another day.

Today, Mother's Day, has me thinking about how, for me, music helped me get through those first days when she passed away. I was not with her when she passed.  I was in fact on the other side of the country, and when the news reached me, the distance I felt was difficult to resolve emotionally.  It happens.  Time is what it is and life moves us as it must, but still, even now, I feel detached in some ways since I was not there.

There was one thing though that helped me to retain a kind of connection.  It may seem strange at first as I describe it, but the potency of the experience has in many ways informed every musical decision I have made since.  Perhaps every decision, musical or not.

A little more than a year before she passed I wrote a large scale orchestra piece called "Last Dance."  It was not a brilliant piece, though it did win some, mostly inconsequential, small competitions; but it was a good piece in concept.  I was very lucky, and humbled, that the University of Arizona allowed me to conduct the piece in performance, twice, as part of a student music festival.  It was a fantastic experience, though I was, to be fair, in a state of mentally and emotionally misplaced arrogance that I certainly did not appreciate its true significance at the time.

In any case, the performances were recorded and I as able to play those for my mother on a visit soon after.  She was already well in the throws of the brain cancer, but I recall how she watched the video quite intently - it required a lot of her limited focus, and she was already unable to speak much, if at all, very well - but she smiled and held my hand and for a time seemed happy.

When she passed, and I returned back home for the funeral, I asked my brother Andy to talk me though her last minutes as he had been there and I was curious to know.  As he began to tell me of those last hours, minutes, and moments, the music from "Last Dance" came flooding into my head like a detailed sound track full of every subtle nuance I could have imagined.

I have no doubt that I was projecting my own need onto the purpose of the music, but even so, it was clear to me that when given the chance music can tap into things that we otherwise would overlook.

The music gave me solace.  It allowed me to come to terms and peace with what was otherwise unbearable.  To this day it still holds me in a kind of spiritual comfort, keeping me close to my mom, God and my own sole.

That musical connection is in many ways just one of the many things my mother gave me.  Even at the end, she still was looking out for me.  Helping me.  Loving me.  It is still a fantastic gift that I treasure daily.