“Well I heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord… but you don’t really care for music, do ya?”
As I sit down to type this, the chills are running up and down my spine and wreaking havoc on my ability to focus. Almost a full year since my last post, I am admittedly apprehensive about this endeavor. It seems too late, like a last second attempt at trying to grasp that which has left. Forever. Some things are just better left alone. Time will heal those wounds that seem incurable, and eventually all will be ok… acceptable, even. Just let life wash over the tracks, and a new path will emerge. Leading you away from the complicated past and into brighter days. The tracks on the road to David seem to be eroding. Perhaps that path can no longer navigated, so you take the alternate route. The route that leads to daylight. Life moving on, no matter what the past held or what the future has in store.
I was on that path.
But the brutally beautiful sound of music can change things instantly. Flooding your mind with what has been, what is, and what could be… very few things are as inspiring as a child experiencing music and applying it to their life. Letting their impressionable minds attempt to grasp the thoughts of those who have lived three decades longer than they have, placing words in a unique compartment that allows no room for interpretation. There is, and there isn’t. It applies, or it doesn’t. That’s all. In one ear and out the other… or… in one ear, infiltrating the thought process and moving them to tears, because… it is. It applies. It truly matters.
I was driving recently with my family, listening to a CD that I had put together for the ride. A particular song came on, and we started listening. About a minute later, I looked in the rear-view and saw my son sobbing… trying to keep it hidden. I turned down the volume and asked what’s wrong… what happened that changed the entire mood of the car? Sebastian looked at me and said, “It reminds me of Uncle Dave.”
Damn.
The ironic thing is that about ten years earlier, I had watched my one-year-old son hum the melody of this same song, and it was the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. I looked into my rear-view mirror to see my single most dear possession trying to follow the music he heard from my stereo… not even able to communicate through words yet. Just trying his best to grasp what he was hearing and relay it. A precious child, intently listening to a truly inspirational song with no experience to build on—just knowing that what he heard moved him to hum the melody. It mattered.
But a decade changes a man… changes a boy… changes a family. I tried my best to shield him from the agony; this time, my rear-view mirror revealed a new person with scars and pain. 10 years old. With the memory of my cousin swirling through his head, not knowing the entire story—just knowing that his father spent night after night in his office with his door locked, possibly sobbing just like he was. Understanding that some nights, Dad should just be “left alone.” Knowing that we don’t really mention David’s name anymore. We just seem like a family that’s moved on, or at least is trying to.
He gave a speech at Thanksgiving two years ago… saying that even though some family members aren’t here anymore, we are thankful for those that are. And we miss those who aren’t. He didn’t know how else to put it, but he stood there and did it anyway. Better than anyone else in the room. My idol.
“It reminds me of Uncle Dave.”
His pain resonated with me unlike anything I’ve heard in while. A passionate child, exhibiting genuine pain, even if some of it was really the pain that he knew existed in my heart. Knowing his father just wasn’t “over” this because it was too real. His father is too real to just move on. A poet’s soul.
And attempting to sooth him was somewhat futile, knowing that the pain still exists in my heart… knowing that there was no way possible the man driving the car could explain it away. It just was. It just is.
And always will be.
Like the power of music.
I thought of him at Easter, with the church choir chanting hymns through the stained glass windows on East Main St. in Bridgeport. His picture was on the front page of the 1985 Bridgeport Post. I think of him as I drive past our grandparents’ house, remembering our youth and how I tried to teach him about lyrics. And life. I think of him constantly, no matter what road I’m on. The one with bright days ahead or the one with darkness and despair in the rear-view. The one with darkness and despair ahead, and the one with bright days in the rear-view. With Sebastian by my side…
