Essence

In the last moments of my mother's life, we played John Denver's "Sunshine on my Shoulders" for her. She was gasping like a fish, in the last stage of morphine-assisted death, and it was horrible to watch, but the music played its sweet sounds and I hope she was hearing it as she drifted away.

I thought of that last night as I watched, Treme on HBO, and one of the characters put an IPod earplug into a dying man's ear and New Orleans jazz music was playing for him. They say that sound is the last sense you lose.

When I woke up this morning, the tune of "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow", was in my head. Methodist music is probably one of the greatest religious gifts I received from my growing up in Elgin--singing in the choir until high school and, eventually after that, returning to the church for the "big music" Methodists love.

I can still recall the musty smell of an old building where I took a music history class at ECC and, earlier, all the music concerts (band and orchestra), practices, private lessons (clarinet), I was lucky enough to have as I moved through junior high into high school.

Music is the way I start each day thanks to KUAT classical music, and I ease past morning into 92.9 The Mountain with a music mix of Dave Mathews, Coldplay and others (but not Taylor Swift, thank you very much).

This all comes to mind because I was just reading about point of view (POV) for story characters, and thinking about my dominant senses--sound/auditory being one of them. Mark says I can hear a spider walking on the ceiling. Probably not true, but the sound of morning birds, neighbor dogs (and then Lia chimes in) barking and howling, laughter of a child--noises actually relax me and help me accept this long, slow healing process.

I read "Heidi" to my mother on our last two months' visits and, more often to not, she seemed to sleep through the pages. On her next to last day, I asked her if she wanted to talk or should I just read "Heidi"? "Just read", she weakly replied. So I did. But I also felt a bit cheated, that here we were, at yet another time when I wanted to talk with her, but talk is not what she wanted to do. I don't think, until right now, I figured out that my mom wasn't much of a talker. She was more like her dad than her mother. Mom was a doer, a fixer, a manager of situation. Where I wanted words shared between her and me, what I got, instead, was her request for a story. What I gave her, in her very end, was the sound of music. Different senses as substance, but connecting as essence.