What the Music Carries Now

I love how music grows with us. It held our hands through high school, helped us find our voice as young adults, and now, as Gen X begins to enter “old age,” music becomes a connection to our past.

We find ourselves returning to specific songs or albums in times of stress or trauma. We find comfort or strength in them; they help us remember better times.

I have a few songs and albums that are forever altered by my experience over the almost six years watching cancer destroy my wife. Each one touched by Katy, but with cancer lingering close behind.

Listening to this album is tricky now that I’ve lost her. It takes me back to a sunny weekend morning a fresh pot of coffee, Katy working a crossword on the couch with two puppies at her sides. I put on Indigo Girls, and at first she just hums along. By the second verse, she puts her lungs behind it, and the house fills with her beautiful voice.

But these memories always come with the pain. It gets easier, little by little, to hold the pain back and sit with the peace a while longer. Still, sometimes the pain comes on too fast, and it’s hard to fight back the tears.

It’s not all bad, though. Those memories bring her back to me for a time.

Brief as it may be, it’s precious.

So the music in my life continues to grow with me. And like so much else in my life, it too has to adjust to the trauma of Katy’s death. Yes, there is sadness in the songs, but there is also happiness. They carry Katy with them now. I can hear her, singing. Pitch perfect.

—

*Record scratch. Freeze frame.*

Nearly seven years into our marriage, pre-cancer, we were in the car headed to visit family. “Another Brick in the Wall” came on the playlist, and I started singing along, quietly. She hummed along too. Suddenly she stopped and turned to me.

“What are the lyrics there?”

“Uh… we don’t need no… “

“No! What does he say before the ‘leave those kids alone’ part?”

“Oh, you mean ‘hey, teacher’?”

She started laughing, hysterically. I couldn’t help but join in. After a few minutes, she caught her breath and said, “I thought they were screaming ‘hey, preacher, leave those kids alone.’”

The laughter started again, and it lasted until we arrived at her sister’s house. And then again when she told the story over dinner.

So now, every time “Another Brick in the Wall” comes on, I don’t hear Pink Floyd. I hear Katy, gasping for air, laughing at herself. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.