The weight of a song: Day 12

I've been writing a lot from the NaBloPoMo prompts this month, which is unusual for me, but I'm not getting much time for contemplation so I'm using the crutch.

Today's prompt is "Share a story about a song or a piece of music that deeply affected you." That's an easy one because today found me driving through the city with tears running down my face because of a song Coraline's class is singing at her school's annual holiday feast for their families.

She was so excited when she crawled in the van because they'd been practicing singing and signing "Let There Be Peace on Earth" for the dinner. It's a song I heard my mother sing many times. One of her favorites. I think she may have sung it as a solo at church one time. She had a lovely voice, both from natural talent and years of voice training. I loved to hear her sing and play the piano, which she also did well. She told me when I was a baby the only thing that would stop me from crying was when she played the piano. I digress .....

Coraline started singing the song, and I joined in. She told me how they had changed the lyrics in the first verse from "God as our father" to "earth as our mother." We agreed that was better. And "let me walk with my brother" to "let me walk with my family." So we sang the first verse together, but as we moved on into the second verse, I couldn't hold my shit together and I started to cry. I might as well admit, I'm crying a little now as I write this.

Of course my voice broke and I had to stop singing. Coraline said from her seat in the back, "Mamá, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

You'd think she'd be used to it by now. It's about the 20th time something has triggered my grief in the van in the past couple of months and I've found myself driving down the road with tears running down my face. "It's just grief," I told her. "I'm OK. That song was one of Grandma's favorites, and we sang it at her funeral. It just made me miss her."

"I didn't remember singing that song at the funeral," she said.

"Well we did," I told her. "Do you want me to tell you a funny story about your uncle Roger and me singing that song for Grandma before she died?"

"Yes!" she said. My girl is always down for a story. I hope you are too.

The day after I flew to Iowa we took Mom off the respirator and other life support. It was such a relief to get that awful tube out of her throat and the mask and tape off her face. We weren't sure how much  she was aware of. She had squeezed my hand the night before when I asked her to let me know if she knew I was there. The next day she was opening her eyes and seemed to be looking at us when we talked to her, but she didn't have any other conscious movement. No more hand squeezing. Certainly no talking. We didn't know how long she would last.

While we waited for a social worker to set up hospice services in her home town and arrange for her to be transported the 60 miles home -- a wait that took hours -- my little brother Roger and I decided we would sing to her, songs we knew she loved: "How Great Thou Art," "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Amazing Grace," and "Let There Be Peace on Earth."

Roger has a beautiful tenor voice, and I'm not half-bad myself on a good day. We were kind of belting out the songs, having fun with them. Mom probably would have been embarrassed, but we were in strange territory. We just wanted to sing to our mom. And she was in no position to reprimand us. Anyway, we were pretty sure we sounded fabulous.

Roger led us into "Let There Be Peace on Earth," and as we moved into the second verse I stopped us and said, "This key is too high. It's going to sound like shit."

"Just keep singing," Mr. Bossypants said. "You're a soprano. Nothing's too high for you." I should have been flattered by his confidence, but mine was telling me this wouldn't end well.

Nevertheless, I kept singing with him in the too-high key to our captive mother who had no choice but to listen. We started the climb toward the high note .... "to take each moment and live each moment ..." and I knew a painful moment was coming up.

Maybe she can't really hear us, I thought. They keep telling us the hearing is the last to go, but maybe she's not even listening. I sure as hell hope she's not because here it comes ....

We hit the high note and I mean we hit that fucker. I sounded like a cat getting a bath. There was nothing peaceful about that note. A woman on her deathbed should not have had to listen to that note.

As I looked at my paralyzed, dying mother I saw a look on her face I'd seen more times than I can count. A wincing, disgusted, shut-the-fuck-up-now look that I never thought I'd see again and that I never did see again. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was there.

When we finished torturing that song my niece Care Bear said, "Did you guys see Grandma's face when you hit that high note? She didn't like that note one bit." She was laughing so hard she probably peed herself a little bit.

"Yes, I saw it, Care Bear," I said. "Thank you for pointing that out." She laughed even harder.

"Why did you start it so high?" I asked Roger. "That was mean. You're such an asshole sometimes."

"It wasn't that high," he said. "Besides, that's the key it's always sung in."

"What? You can't know that. You don't have perfect pitch. You just chose a key and that was it."

"No, I didn't. That's the right key."

"That's ridiculous. There is no right key. There's the key that won't make the singer sound like a cat in heat. You pulled that key out of your ass and now you're trying to defend yourself. Tell him, Mom!"

Mom did not offer up an opinion, but she would have agreed with me. I'm just sorry she had to hear that argument go on for another 15 minutes.

Ten days later my brother and I would be standing at our mom's funeral belting that song out again -- this time in a lower key. We also sang "How Great Thou Art," with its soaring high notes. Roger even threw in some harmony. He's a bigger show off than I am. I'm going to speak for both of us and say we sounded pretty good for people who had tears in their throats.

Such things are a mystery to me, but I like to believe my mom heard us singing her favorite songs in remembrance, and maybe this time she smiled.

I'm going to try not to cry this Thursday when the kids in Coraline's class sing and sign their song, but I'm not making any promises. Like I told Coraline today, this is what grief looks like. It comes out of us as tears and it's OK. We grieve because we love. We grieve because we've lost someone precious. And sometimes, even if we don't do it perfectly, we sing to remember.