Grief

Sunsets and Sunrises

I can’t believe I actu­ally have time (and energy) to write today. Per­haps it’s the fact I’m en route (and in the air), antic­i­pat­ing a nice reunion with Hubby. And the fact that I’m kinda caught up with work things for now. Either way, I’m feel­ing some­what inspired today.

I flew out to South­ern Geor­gia this week for a train­ing ses­sion at a regional hos­pi­tal in the area. It was a one-​​day ses­sion, so ulti­mately I should have flown back yes­ter­day evening instead of today. Except the clos­est air­port to this town was approx­i­mately a 3-​​hour drive. Even if my ses­sion ended when it was sup­posed to end at 5 pm, I would have never made it back to Jack­sonville, FL in time to catch the lat­est flight back to Detroit. So instead, I’m catch­ing the ear­li­est flight back to Detroit today. Non-​​stop, of course! :-P

Since my flight didn’t leave until noon, I thought I’d take full advan­tage of being close to the ocean. Just like I did a cou­ple weeks ago when I was down in Miami (South Beach, baby!) But since I had a lim­ited time, I thought … what bet­ter way to dip my toes in the water by watch­ing the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean? So early this morn­ing, I sat on the beach to watch the sun hide behind clouds; watch­ing the clouds pro­gres­sively change hues. It wasn’t the best of sun­rises; def­i­nitely not any type of “golden hour” scene. But it was beau­ti­ful, nonetheless.

As I sat on the beach, I reflected on how much I still love the ocean; still love being around water. And no mat­ter that it was cloudy and that I felt drops of rain splat­ter onto me, I felt peace­ful, con­tent and – for a brief moment – happy.

I knew some­time in mid-​​July that, despite being on med­ica­tions, my clin­i­cal depres­sion had started to resur­face. (Which, if I would have read back at some of my pre­vi­ous posts, I might have real­ized this a lot sooner.) The pre­cip­i­tat­ing fac­tor – or rather the event that forced me to re-​​seek treat­ment – was when Hubby & I offi­cially moved all our stuff from Chicago back to Detroit.

It makes sense, look­ing back now, that I would need to feel weighted down by every­thing; to feel the con­stant fatigue asso­ci­ated with depres­sion. It makes sense now why I couldn’t even to get out of bed; why I couldn’t stop the rac­ing thoughs of anx­i­ety that would keep me up at night … or, at the very least try to relax.  The truth is that in the span of a year, I had lived through many stres­sors that could have eas­ily sent any other per­son run­ning up a moun­tain, only to jump off the cliff.

Not that I’m say­ing that my stres­sors were any worse than any­body else’s stres­sors. (After all, I’m not writ­ing this to com­plain about my life.) I’m just stat­ing the facts.

I look back at 2010 in awe of myself; of hav­ing sur­vived through one of the most stress­ful years of my life. (And by that, I do mean that there were both bad and good stres­sors.) “But why am I feel­ing so mis­er­able now?,” I remem­ber ask­ing myself in the begin­ning of August.

I had no answer at that time, but today I real­ize that this was exactly what hap­pened when deal­ing with my depres­sion the first time around. But that time, it took three years after my failed IVF to real­ize that I hadn’t even begun to deal with my loss. At least this time, it only took 9 months from the last major life-​​stressor to real­ize I needed help again. And two months from mid-​​July to finally do some­thing about it.

I’m slowly begin­ning to feel the fog lift. And by slow, I think of the “Slowsky” tur­tles in that one TV com­mer­cial (who, coin­ci­den­tally, just recently had a baby … WTF?). Over the past year, there have been moments of bright col­ors scat­tered amongst the other days of gray. There were those days where I felt brave enough to face the world amongst those other days where I just didn’t want to deal with any­thing. But it seems like that those moments of hap­pi­ness – brief as they can be – are hap­pen­ing just a tad more fre­quently than before. And I guess that’s some­thing to be proud of.

One thing is for cer­tain … even when the sun goes down in life, it even­tu­ally rises again. Here’s hop­ing for brighter days ahead.

*****

Related Posts:

Emily is moved in mys­te­ri­ous ways

Emily goes belly-​​up

Emily makes her list and checks it twice

Emily starts another new chapter

Emily hopes to keep her promise

Emily weath­ers through a loss

Emily loses a piece of her heart

Hail …

Whew. What a foot­ball game! And I swear … that 4th Quar­ter nearly gave me a heart attack. But what a way to kick off the first-​​ever “Under The Lights” game at Michi­gan Stadium.

And I’m so glad we were there. Except …

Except on the ride home — while bask­ing in the after­glow of an under­dog win — I sud­denly felt a pang of sadness.

Today, Hubby & I decided to visit Dad. But before then, we decided to head to one of our favorite Detroit-​​area pizze­rias. As I “checked in” to the restau­rant on foursquare from my iPhone, I felt another pang of sadness.

While at the ceme­tery, Hubby and I had our usual “con­ver­sa­tion” with Dad; telling him about what has been going on, even though we knew he could see us from above. We told him about the amaz­ing come-​​from-​​behind Wolver­ine win. And we told him about eat­ing at one of his favorite pizze­rias for lunch.

And as we told him about these thing, I felt the tears roll down my cheek. Because I missed him.

I missed how we used to go to Piz­za­pa­palis for spe­cial occa­sions like Father’s Day 2010 … the last time I “checked in” on foursquare at that restaurant.

And I missed how Dad never failed to call me after such excit­ing foot­ball games (or any other sport­ing events) to tease me that he was there at the game … even though we both knew he was just watch­ing the game on TV while sit­ting in his recliner.

It amazes me how much one can miss silly things such as these … when you know it won’t hap­pen again.

Thanks for the Wolver­ine win, Dad …

Yada Yada … and Then Some

See? I don’t think my niece, Kairi is ready for Fall either!

Sad but true … tonight was the first night I stepped out­side my house since Labor Day.

It’s a good thing Hubby made it a Din­ner & A Movie kind of night, oth­er­wise I would have likely stayed at home in my paja­mas as I had done all week long.

What can I say? I love work­ing from home … well, at least when I’m not trav­el­ing for my job. And see­ing that I’ve spent the past few months “grounded” at home, doing all web-​​based “vir­tual train­ing” all day in my home office … some­times I see no rea­son to step out of the house.

I guess it’s also a good thing it was a short week.

But see­ing that the weather in Metro-​​Detroit has been pretty much crappy since Mon­day, it’s prob­a­bly best I stayed away from the annoy­ing dri­vers who can’t seem to fig­ure out how to drive in the rain.

I mean … really, peo­ple. We live in the Motor City, we should all know how to drive like mail car­ri­ers: Nei­ther rain, nor snow, nor sleet — yada yada …

As if I don’t have enough to whinge about, here’s my biggest gripe for the day: Today I put on a pair of jeans for the first time since May. Although I was (very) grate­ful that they still fit (whew!), I was more upset that this meant we were one step fur­ther away from summer.

Can you tell I don’t want the warm weather to disappear?

I don’t know why I’ve been feel­ing like this lately. I mean I truly love Autumn and every­thing that sur­rounds the beau­ti­ful sea­son … but it’s almost as if this year I’m dread­ing it.

I’m begin­ning to think that it’s not that I no longer like the com­ing sea­son, but rather I don’t like think­ing about what comes after the leaves fall from the trees and the bit­ter cold starts to set­tle in. After all, I’ve never been much of a Win­ter person.

Maybe it’s because Autumn means I’m one step closer to Thanks­giv­ing … to the week­end when my beloved Rain passed away. To when my Dad first entered the hos­pi­tal that first week in Decem­ber. To when he passed away.

It doesn’t seem pos­si­ble that it’ll be a year very soon. Yet it almost seems a life­time apart. There are some days I’m per­fectly okay with things; okay with get­ting on with my life.

But then there are those other days … days like this past week … where the emo­tions are still so raw; so painful to even think about. And although those moments don’t hap­pen as fre­quently any more … when they do, they seem so much more intense.

In any case, I know that time doesn’t stop for grief. If there is any­thing that deal­ing with the emo­tions of Infer­til­ity has taught me is that life keeps mov­ing on despite the all hurt and pain.

Too bad it only took me ten years to dis­cover this. <smirk>

So here’s what I plan to do to keep mov­ing on: Tomor­row I’m gonna enjoy going to the Big House for the first night-​​time Michi­gan Foot­ball game. (Woo-​​hoo! Go Blue!) And Sun­day we’ll go watch Hubby’s younger cousin peform with his HS March­ing Band at one of the small-​​town parades. And Mon­day? I go for my first gui­tar lessons.

So yeah … maybe get­ting myself (and keep­ing myself out of the house) will do me some good.

In the mean time … maybe this video will inspire me to embrace Autumn in Ann Arbor …

Round Peg, Square Hole

I admit … I haven’t been doing much since being back from vaca­tion. Which I sup­pose is a good thing. I’ve done a lot of read­ing lately; def­i­nitely more than writing.

Which is a shame, because I do have some fun pic­tures from vaca­tion to share with you. Unless, of course … you’ve seen it on my per­sonal FB page! :-)

Instead, I’ve been on a read­ing kick. I fin­ished “The Cast­aways” while in line at Uni­ver­sal Orlando. And yes­ter­day, I just fin­ished “The Help” … a book I had wanted to read before see­ing the movie. Today, I start “The Soli­tude of Prime Num­bers”.

I’ve not felt inspired to write lately, and I’m going through one of my phases where even FB or read­ing other blogs doesn’t sound appeal­ing to me right now. What I do know is that it likely has to do with those emo­tional peaks and val­leys I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing lately.

I’d elab­o­rate more but … quite frankly, it feels like I’m beat­ing a dead horse.

So instead … to honor the “retire­ment” of Steve Jobs from Apple, I decided to post one of the company’s older com­mer­cials; one that I have always loved. And see­ing that there are many times (espe­cially lately) that I feel as if I see things so much more dif­fer­ently than oth­ers, I fig­ure that this should be my inspi­ra­tion for the day.

Resolution of Happiness

Appar­ently, even after 25 years to this day, Emily the Groupie is not dead.

Oh yes, every­one … Emily appar­ently has some life in her just yet. At least after this past week­end, any­way. And what a week­end it was.

It started out inno­cently enough. Hubby & I drove to our Chicago apart­ment on Thurs­day night, know­ing that we were going to see my favorite band, INXS per­form Fri­day night at a casino just 20 min­utes out­side of the city cen­ter. As we drove around the park­ing garage Fri­day evening, Hubby pointed out the freight ele­va­tor at the far end of the struc­ture. And as I looked over, we both noticed that the large ele­va­tor door was opening.

It was kind of a sur­real moment, watch­ing this group of peo­ple step out of the freight ele­va­tor; it almost appeared as if they were mov­ing in slow motion. Actu­ally, as I think about it now … it reminded me of the begin­ning of the 1982 “Don’t Change” video. What I hadn’t noticed — ini­tially, any­way — was that it hap­pened to be all the mem­bers of INXS. When it finally dawned on me, I was too stunned to do any­thing but smile and wave at them from inside our car. And I man­aged to get a big grin and wave from a cou­ple of them.

Now … why didn’t I do the orig­i­nal “groupie” thing and jump out of the car at that time? I’m not sure. I think it was likely because I sud­denly felt shy; felt intim­i­dated by them. Which is ridicu­lous, right? See­ing that I man­aged to track them down a cou­ple of times in my youth.

Except now, I was older. I had expe­ri­enced things since those younger days. I was brave back then; not intim­i­dated by doing silly things, not afraid to be dif­fer­ent or unique in front of other peo­ple. Now … after expe­ri­enc­ing sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment, I had become afraid of rejec­tion … of being laughed at or sin­gled out.

I’d say that all of that sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment and rejec­tion (and not to men­tion, feel­ing iso­lated and and cer­tainly sin­gled out) came from my expe­ri­ence from Infer­til­ity, but the truth is, such emo­tions can come from a cul­mi­na­tion of things. I say this now … after wrap­ping up my IF jour­ney … only because when look­ing at every­thing that hap­pened over the past year (loss of a job, birth of another new fam­ily mem­ber which didn’t come from me, the sud­den loss of a par­ent, etc), I’ve felt every sin­gle one of those same emo­tions I did when in the depths of Infer­til­ity depres­sion. Just not as intense.

Why am I telling you all this as I’m ref­er­enc­ing my younger “groupie” days? Well, it goes back to that ini­tial encounter in the park­ing garage before the show. And my mind telling me — based on my past expe­ri­ences of sad­ness and iso­la­tion — that I would just be mak­ing more of a fool of myself be putting myself in the posi­tion to be pos­si­bly rejected.

My hus­band chided me for not “run­ning” after them; say­ing that I should have been more aggres­sive. And it’s because of him that after the con­cert (and know­ing exactly where the band would be exit­ing the venue) I found myself run­ning up to the band and ask­ing for a quick pic­ture with them. While I orig­i­nally got the stan­dard “The band needs to hit the road” com­ment from their snooty band man­ager, two of the mem­bers took the time to take a pic­ture with me. So yes … I was elated. And I felt myself gain a lit­tle more con­fi­dence in myself.

So flash-​​forward to the next day in Detroit, MI. (Yes … we did buy tick­ets for both loca­tions. Don’t judge! ) After pass­ing the band’s tour buses twice on I-​​94 back to our home in metro Detroit, we headed down to the Fox The­ater for another night of great music. (In fact, if you ask my opin­ion … I’d say their Detroit per­for­mance superceded the Chicago show.) But see­ing that I was in such a “lucky” streak, we took a cou­ple of the band’s older vinyl records and an old photo from my first encounter with the band to get autographed.

At the end of the show (and with the lit­tle con­fi­dence I gained from my most recent encounter), Hubby and I hung around the back of the the­ater wait­ing for the band to sur­face. How­ever; unlike the pre­vi­ous night where I had them all to myself, there was a crowd of other fans lin­ger­ing around.

“Never gonna hap­pen,” I thought; but since Hubby kept egging me on, we persisted.

Really, I only wanted one person’s sig­na­ture. I wanted Andrew Far­riss, the brains behind the band, to sign a photo of myself with my brother & LJC next to Michael Hutchence. I wanted that par­tic­u­lar pic­ture signed because — while Hutch was the main focus in this pic­ture — the pic­ture caught Andrew sit­ting qui­etly on a curb behind us in the back­ground. To me, it’s such a serendip­i­tous shot; espe­cially since Hutch, Andrew’s song­writ­ing part­ner and best mate, was always out front. While Andrew, the shy genius always avoided the spot­light. Since Hutch was no longer around, it just seemed appro­pri­ate that I try to get Andrew to sign my favorite photo. Besides, although I fan­cied Hutch to the nth degree … I secretly had a thing for Andrew; know­ing that if we ever crossed paths and became friends, we’d have a lot more in com­mon than I would ever have with Hutch.

I still had my doubts that I’d ever get that sig­na­ture … espe­cially since Andrew wasn’t one that liked crowds. That, and the lit­tle con­fi­dence I had from ear­lier seemed to be dwin­dling by the minute. But just as I was about to throw in the towel, I spot­ted an old HS friend who’s sis­ter took us to one of the last INXS shows before “Kick” blew up. I think all of us had the same thought: that we’d never get the chance to talk to them. But now that I had friends to talk to, it made it worth my while to stay. In fact, within a half hour or so the tour buses left … as did the remain­ing crowd sur­round­ing the theater.

Hubby had then left me alone con­vers­ing with old friends to get our car from the struc­ture. While wait­ing for Hubby arrived with the car, HS friend and I stood talk­ing amongst our­selves. A few moments later we noticed a flut­ter of activ­ity next to us. HS friend nudged me and said, “There he is!” And a few feet in front of me stood Andrew Far­riss. Stunned, but unwill­ing to allow myself to freeze up again — fear­ing that I’d be rejected again — I quickly walked up to him and told him my story about why I wanted this par­tic­u­lar pic­ture signed by him. And gra­ciously, Andrew signed it.

Unfor­tu­nately, no stun­ning con­ver­sa­tion or spark of friend­ship ever occurred from that encounter. Yet I felt extremely lucky and … happy. It’s some­thing I’m just now real­iz­ing I wouldn’t allow myself to feel since the pass­ing of my father 8 months prior. Even back then, I was only start­ing to allow hap­pi­ness back in my life after a sh*tty year and after years of unre­solved Infer­til­ity issues.

My hap­pi­ness was some­thing that appar­ently my Hubby noticed later that night. He smiled at me as I told him the story of what hap­pened when he had left to pick up the car. When I fin­ished he turned to me and said, “See? There’s the Emily that I remem­ber. The one that I fell in love with the day we met.”

While I know our love is stronger now than it ever was back then, I couldn’t help but reflect on Hubby’s com­ment. I couldn’t help but remem­ber who I was back before Infer­til­ity came into my world; before expe­ri­enc­ing sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment. And what I recalled was — despite teenage hor­monal ten­den­cies — I was a happy, free-​​spirit who loved meet­ing new peo­ple. And I loved hav­ing fun while expe­ri­enc­ing new things. I was con­fi­dent and dar­ing; and I didn’t care what any­body thought of me.

And even though it had taken awhile to sur­face this past week­end, I real­ized a part of that Emily still existed inside. I under­stood that I could still be that same per­son I was so many years ago. I rec­og­nized that — despite think­ing that the “groupie” part of me died many years ago — I was still, and will likely always be “Emily the Groupie.”

*****

Related Posts:

Hello. Meet Emily the Groupie …

Uhm … what’s my favorite band again?

Oh, Hutch … why? Why?!

Need­ing INXS tonight …

(Pssst … look over to the right for some awe­some con­cert pics! –> )


 

Go Fourth … And Be Happy

First of all, Happy Birth­day, USA !!!

And sec­ond … Really? It’s July 4th already? When did half the year slip away? It’s been a crazy cou­ple of months here in Apron­Strings­Land. Busy with work, busy with trav­el­ing. And — I’m not gonna deny it — busy in the emo­tional end of things.

Yes­ter­day marked 7 months since my Dad unex­pect­edly passed away; a feel­ing I’m still try­ing to come to grips with. Every­body has said that it will get bet­ter as time passes, but it seems to me that I feel more emo­tion­ally drained as the days go by.

This past week, Dr. Bro came into town. Amidst the hec­tic sched­ule I’ve had for work, plus the added pres­sure of being at a local onsite hos­pi­tal this past week … I had been just a leee­tle stressed.

Okay. A lot stressed. Espe­cially given that I knew this was loom­ing over my head this past Tuesday.

But the real rea­son Dr. Bro came into town was to sur­prise the “lit­tle” cousins (who aren’t so lit­tle any more … they made me a mar­garita, for Pete’s sake!) who had orga­nized a pre-​​4th cel­e­bra­tion to coin­cide with the local city’s fire­works. He wanted to be here to be with Dad’s side of the fam­ily; to spend time with us, because — if he’s feel­ing any­thing like I am — he wanted to feel closer to Dad. Unfor­tu­nately, he could only stay for two nights; and the sec­ond night had been for the party.

It was a glo­ri­ous night; spent bar­be­cue­ing at my Aunts’ back­yard … which just hap­pens to be next to a lake.  Oh, and did I men­tion that they just hap­pen to be located behind the park where the fire­works are held every year? Need­less to say, we had the best seat in the city! The fam­ily had a blast, espe­cially the cousins who were able to eat (and — ahem — drink) to our hearts’ content.

After­wards, on the drive home I sud­denly felt this wave of sad­ness take over. The best way I can describe it is the melan­choly I would feel in my youth (and even to this day) when­ever I had to say good-​​bye to out-​​of-​​town fam­ily after spend­ing a won­der­ful amount of time (a week­end or even an entire vaca­tion) with them. I’d sud­denly feel lonely and wish we could stay together forever.

I chalked most it up to the fact that I got to spend such lit­tle time with Dr. Bro this time around. He spent his one full day help­ing Mom search for a new car, while I had to work at an onsite loca­tion the entire day. And since I had to work again the next day, we would have no chance to spend any quiet time alone.

The other part I chalked up to miss­ing my Dad. After all, I think he would have totally got­ten a kick out of the “cousins” doing the cook­ing and the serv­ing; would have loved to see us kick back and have such relax­ing fun together. Which, of course, had me spilling some tears for a bit.

Flash for­ward to yes­ter­day … Mom, Hubby & I went to church and then to the ceme­tery to bring some flow­ers and visit Dad. I knew that Dr. Bro had vis­ited him the day after our party; which I can only imag­ine was a toughy. (At least I live closer and can visit Dad more often.)

What I hadn’t expected was to see pic­tures of my niece, Emilia Grace, taped to my Dad’s grave­stone. And the minute I saw the pic­ture of my Dad hold­ing his grand­daugh­ter, I fell to tears. I knew how much my Dad loved kids, so see­ing that pic­ture broke my heart; espe­cially since we all knew that he’d never be able to phys­i­cally hold his grand­child and play with her.

And, although these days I try very hard to let my Infer­til­ity get the best of me … see­ing that pic­ture also reminded me that I was never was able to give him the grand­kids that both my par­ents deserved. And if I did have any kids, he would have had at least a good 13 years to spend with them before he died. But instead, he only got to see and hold his one grand­child a few days after her birth … and then three weeks later, he was gone.

I know that a lot of these emo­tions are stem­ming from the fact that my birth­day is com­ing up. And that it fol­lows an unful­filled wed­ding anniver­sary date and yet another major hol­i­day. But really … when does this get bet­ter? When can I finally see more bits of hap­pi­ness than shades of blue?

Forty-​​Two

A week after my Dad passed away last Decem­ber, my Mom told me that there was this phone mes­sage from the local CVS store left for my Dad. She had said that the caller stated that some photo my Dad had sent in for “restora­tion” would take a lit­tle longer than they had orig­i­nally thought; that it might be a few weeks more.

Mom had told me this because she wasn’t aware that my Dad was hav­ing a photo “restored” and won­dered if I knew any­thing about it. Which I had not.

Flash for­ward to late March of this year. In prepa­ra­tion for her taxes, Mom had stopped by CVS on the way home to get a record of her med­ica­tion costs for 2010. While she was there, Mom sud­denly remem­bered the phone mes­sage she received back in Decem­ber, so she decided to stop by the photo sec­tion. She spoke to the tech­ni­cian there who had told her, “Yes, we were won­der­ing what hap­pened. He was insis­tent on get­ting the pic­ture done as soon as he could. And then we never heard from him.”

After my Mom explained what had hap­pened, the photo tech­ni­cian was so sur­prised. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “In fact, we were just about ready to call back again.”

When Mom took the photo out of the enve­lope, this is what she saw:

Yes­ter­day would have been their 42nd Wed­ding Anniver­sary. And I’m sure my Mom’s heart felt bro­ken yet once again. Because I know that I’m miss­ing my Dad every sin­gle minute of every sin­gle day.

Happy Anniver­sary Mom & Dad. You might not phys­i­cally be by each other’s side … but I know in spirit, you are.

 

A Song I Want Played At My Funeral

Day Twenty-​​Four – A Song I Want Played At My Funeral:

It started a few years ago … prob­a­bly even longer. Come to think of it, Hubby &I prob­a­bly started to have dis­cus­sions about what song we’d want to have at our own funer­als shortly after we had seen “Love, Actu­ally” when Liam Neeson’s char­ac­ter plays “Bye Bye, Baby” by the Bay City Rollers at his recently-​​deceased wife’s funeral service.

When Hubby’s grand­mother passed away in Jan­u­ary of 2008, Hubby’s fam­ily had asked him to put together a slide show that they could take with them back to the Philip­pines, where his “Nanay” would finally placed at rest. But when you have a slide show, you must have accom­pa­ny­ing music to go with the slide show, right? So Hubby & I had come up with a hand­ful of songs to place on this DVD slide show: “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion was an obvi­ous choice. We also threw in Boyz II Men’s “A Song For Mama” for good mea­sure. (That song gets me every time!)

A few months after that project was com­pleted, Hubby told me about a song that came up on dig­i­tal music library. He had been miss­ing his Nanay when Rob Thomas’ “Now Comes The Night” came on. It was a song, he said, that was per­fect to play at a funeral.

A Hard Day … Last quiet moment together as a family

Of course, I had to lis­ten to the song right away … and when I did, I couldn’t help but think the same thing. Because, as sad as the song sounded, the lyrics were hope­ful and uplifting.

In fact, it’s a song I can lis­ten dur­ing the days when I miss my Dad the most. Because it reminds me that – even though he’s not phys­i­cally here next to me – he’s still with me in spirit.

So this would be the song that I’d like to be played at my own funeral … I want those fam­ily and friends to feel com­forted that I will still be with them, look­ing over them in the best way that I can.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

 

A Song That I Listen To When I’m Sad

Day Twenty-​​Two – A Song That I Lis­ten To When I’m Sad:

There’s some­thing about music that can stir up the best and worst of emo­tions. Just like any INXS song can bring a smile to my face, so can another song drive me to tears.

I recently heard an episode of “Fresh Air” on NPR where Stephen Col­bert talked about how he took voice lessons to help train for his one-​​time /​ one-​​performance role in Sondheim’s pro­duc­tion of “The Com­pany.”  Col­bert, who grad­u­ated from North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity with a The­ater degree, said it was like hav­ing to retrain him­self after all these years; exer­cis­ing vocal cords and mus­cles that he hadn’t used in years. And while his vocal coach had taught him all the tech­ni­cal aspects of singing, he still hadn’t known how to sing with any “emotion.”

That is, until the day Colbert’s vocal coach told him to for­get all he learned, to not worry so much about “break­ing the rules” … he was told to sing “silly.”

And that’s when it clicked for Col­bert. From that moment, he was able to use his voice – a voice that was meant for musi­cal the­ater, accord­ing to Sond­heim – and fill it with all the emo­tions that were required for his character.

There are cer­tain recorded songs out there where you can “feel” the emo­tions behind the singer’s voice. Those are the songs that give you the goose bumps when you hear it … whether for the first time or the hun­dredth time.  Those are the songs that can make you cry; whether for joy or for sadness.

Those are the songs that can likely lift you up — even if it’s a sad song — out of the darkness.

James Blunt’s “Beau­ti­ful” does that to me. There’s some­thing about his voice, matched with the lyrics to this song that speak to me … that make me even the slight­est bit hap­pier when­ever I hear it.

Maybe it’s because Blunt talks about a chance encounter with a woman he will never know. Maybe it’s because it’s because he speaks of that moment with such rev­er­ence. But the way that Blunt sings his lyrics has a way of mak­ing me feel as if I could be that “angel” … that I could be that beau­ti­ful per­son who had caught some stranger’s eye and cap­tured this stranger’s imagination.

Now real­is­ti­cally, I know that’s absolutely untrue. (Who would look twice at me?) But I think it’s the pos­si­bil­ity that it could hap­pen that cap­tures my imag­i­na­tion … cap­tures my smile long enough for the wave of sad­ness to dissipate.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

Dimming The Lights

Today is Father’s Day … and this will be the first year I’ll be with­out my Dad.

I’ve been hav­ing a pretty rough go at it all the days lead­ing up to today. And even now, after I hit “pub­lish” on this post, I’m not quite sure what the rest of the day will bring.

What I do know is that I’m sad. Extremely sad. More sad that I ever thought I’d be. And it sucks because I miss my Dad so much.

And instead of mak­ing a trip to the ceme­tery today, I would rather be mak­ing the trip to a steak house where I could treat Dad to the “steak din­ner” he always wanted every year. And I wish I could phys­i­cally put my arms around him and hug him … and thank Dad for all he’s done for me over the years.

So to honor my Dad, I’ll be tak­ing a break from the whole 30-​​Day Song Chal­lenge. Instead, I’ll be dim­ming my “Broad­way Lights” because it looks like it’ll be a “solo tonight … but I think I’ll be alright.”

I love you and miss you to pieces, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

 

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