Category: My Tribe

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My Favorite Song This Time Last Year

Day Thirty – My Favorite Song This Time Last Year:

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been 30 days of posting songs and videos on my blog. Okay … so I’ve interspersed a few posts in between the 30-Day Song Challenge, but they were for good reasons. At least I think they were.

Regardless, this now means I get to post another NaBloPoMo badge on my “Badges of Honor” page. Woo-frickin’-hoo!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed following along with my music posts. As you can probably gather by now, music has always played a big part in my life. Somehow, I can’t see my life being complete without having a song in my head and in my heart.

But today, really is about the last song I need to name. I have a hard time remembering what I ate last night, let alone trying to remember what song I liked this time last year. I mean, give me a break … I’m getting senile in my older years. Especially since I have a birthday coming up this week.

So instead, I’m posting my favorite song once again. Except this time, I actually had time to put a video together for myself. So enjoy the slideshow below … as the description I added on YouTube says, this video is:

A photographic tale of my personal relationship with Hubby & with kids … and the fact that we can’t have any of our own. Resolving that part has been hard on us, but now we know … “Apron Strings can be used for other things than what they’re meant for.” But I would like to think that other persons (whether they’re kids or not … ) can still be happily “wrapped in my Apron Strings.”

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What is with this 30-day song challenge?

What was yesterday‘s song?

 

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A Song From My Childhood

Day Twenty-Nine – A Song From My Childhood:

I’m not sure why I always think of this song whenever I reflect back on my childhood. I could probably bring up a ton of songs from my younger years, thanks in part to my parents’ own love of music. Or I could bring up some old storybook songs that my parents used to play on our record player.

Yes, oh younger ones, that’s what us older kids had for on-demand entertainment back in the day. No VCR’s back then, and TV programming that was dictated by the TV stations.

Which is probably where I remember seeing “Yellow Submarine” for the first time.

But really, the reason this song has such a firm grasp in the recess of my mind is because of this memory I have of singing this song with my parents in various locations. I remember singing it at home on the mornings or afternoons when Mom would put some Beatles on the record player. And I remember singing this song in our old station wagon while my Dad played his 8-tracks on those road trips to London, Ontario (or even that famed trip down to Disneyworld in the late ‘70’s).

So now every time I hear this song, I remember singing this song at the top of my 5-year old lungs and having such a blast with my parents.

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What is with this 30-day song challenge?

What was yesterday‘s song?

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A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty

Day Twenty-Eight – A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty:

Once upon a time when Emily was a young lass of twelve, her brother brought home a cassette tape by the Violent Femmes. The emerging 80’s alterative music lover (thanks in part to her older brother’s taste in music) loved the infectious songs recorded on that now-classic album.

There was one particular song that cracked 12-yr old Emily up every time she heard it. It was a song that her brother loved to play over and over again, just to get a rise out of his “baby sister.”

One fine day, while blasting out the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up” on the stereo system, the siblings’ mother came rushing into the room. She pressed the stop button on the cassette tape player and then took it out of the stereo system. She then proceeded to throw said cassette tape down on the ground and smash it with one stomp of her heel.

From that day forward, every time Emily hears that song … she can’t help but feel just a tad guilty.

The other part of her looks back at that memory and GRINS. Because really … how smart were those two siblings to play such a song in front of their mother?

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What is with this 30-day song challenge?

What was yesterday‘s song?

Who knew that one day we'd be delinquents in our Mom's eyes?

 

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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.

 

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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.

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What is with this 30-day song challenge?

What was yesterday‘s song?