When Songs Break Our Hearts - The Ink Well Prompt: The Music in You

I may not be the most musically inclined person, but at times music affects me profoundly. I was raised in a musical family – one that sang together around the piano at the holidays, in the car on road trips, and around the campfire in the summertime.

We were church-goers when I was growing up, and though I have not continued that tradition in my adult life for a myriad of reasons, I am still deeply moved by chorales and liturgical music, and by the amazing sound of many voices lifting up, filling a chapel or a great hall. In fact, I was in a choral group for a while as a second soprano, though I have never actually learned to read music. (I know! Crazy!)

Source: neelam279 on Pixabay

This post is about the times music has infiltrated my heart, my mind, my soul, and brought me to tears. I mean uncontrolled tears, pouring down my face in rivulets as I sat in a public venue, trying and utterly failing to regain control of my emotions. Has this ever happened to you?

It was like an out-of-body experience, in those instances. I was not myself. I’m a strong-willed person. Kind of a bad-ass, actually. People look to me for strength. They think of me as the indomitable one. Unsinkable. That person who can muscle through anything. So, how is it that music can reduce me to a puddle of tears?

The first time it happened, I was a new mother, and my daughter was perhaps a year and a half old. Our “playgroup” was an assembly of mothers with similar aged children, as we had gone through pregnancy together and all used the same doula. We had become good friends throughout that shared experience, and now we met up to have our one-year-olds learn how to share toys. We took them on outings to the park and to the zoo and so on.

But let me back up for a moment. I had become a mother when my own mother was dying of cancer. My mother passed on when my baby girl was just two months old, with my siblings and I surrounding her bedside, singing her into the next life with the old songs we had sung together over the years. (I wrote about this in my post, Beginnings and Endings: An Ode to Love, Loss and Coffee.) It was a time of emotional highs and lows.

Source: Pixabay

I will say that the birth of a child and the journey into motherhood is all-consuming. And looking back, I realize how I must have redirected my grief into that experience. Every day was an adventure in newness and watching that beautiful little life become a tiny person all her own, with a personality and an impish, infectious joy. Perhaps I just set it all aside.

And so, one Saturday afternoon, when my playgroup went to hear a folk group together that performed for and with children, I had nothing on my mind but a fun experience and filling my child’s day with music and fun and friends.

That was when I got clobbered by a song that this lovely little folk group sang in four-part harmony. It reached right into my heart and gave it a giant thwack. I don’t know how to explain it. The song was called Music in My Mother’s House. It spoke of wind chimes in the window, and bells inside the clock. An organ in the corner, and tunes on a music box.

It was as if these people had grown up with me, had been in my house, had played by my side, and stood with me by the organ and the piano, and sang along with us as we sang the old songs all those years. And very suddenly, the grief came pouring out. My eyes filled with tears, and I thought, “Oh no! What is happening?” Then a river opened up in me and poured out.

I couldn’t leave. I needed to hear the song. I couldn’t walk out on something that spoke to me so deeply. Yet I was just helpless against that tide of tears. I just had to let them fall.

Later I learned that the song is by Stuart Stotts, and was written in 1985. You can read the lyrics here. Or listen to him sing it on Youtube.

The second time was years later. I cannot explain this instance either, except that it must have been that sense that childhood is so fleeting. My little ones were growing up, moving their way up through primary school. It felt too fast, too fleeting.

One afternoon there was a little concert in the school’s peace garden. The children had made little wands using popsicle sticks, each with a bird or a flower or a butterfly on the end. It was so sweet, and so charming.

Again, I arrived with no intent except to enjoy the little concert. In fact, I was stressed. My mind was elsewhere. I had been trying to accomplish something with work and was almost late. But I took my seat with the other parents, calmed myself and tuned in to the little performance. The children trooped out, and began singing songs of peace, of love, and of springtime.

It was one of those softly warm spring days, where the sun feels good on your face and there’s a touch of magic in the air. I began to realize the preciousness of the moment, and of childhood.

When they began to sing What a Wonderful World, that was when it hit me. The tears welled up, spilled over, then led to more and more. I wiped them away. Or I tried. But it was me against a river. I hadn’t thought to bring any tissues, not expecting this little concert to be an emotional experience. Fortunately, a mom sitting near me took pity on me and handed me one, which was instantly soaked.

Grief comes in many forms. Every day of a small child's life is something to celebrate, I think. Yet they change so quickly, and you know those moments — the first smile, the first little laugh, the first steps, the day they can finally dress themselves, and all their little achievements, mean they are leaving babyhood, then early childhood, and then eventually their youth. You feel such wonder and amazement through all of it, yet some of your heart is breaking at the same time.

Well. Enough about that.

I love this particular rendition of the song. It is Louis Armstrong’s lovely resonant voice with an animation of a beautiful spring day, flowers, butterflies, and white clouds against a blue blue sky. It reminds me of the magic of that spring day long ago at my children's school.

These times have really stuck with me. They remind me of just how powerful music can be. It can reach into our hearts and pull out things that are dormant or in need of being let out. Maybe when we feel bottled up, that’s a signal that it’s time to find just the right music and let it all out.

I'll leave you with two more videos. If you want to hear voices that can truly stir your soul, try listening to Pentatonix. In this one, they sing Hallelujah, which of course was originally written by Leonard Cohen. It's a great song for when you want to be spiritually uplifted.

In the next one, my favorite street busker, Allie Sherlock, is performing on a street corner in Dublin when the song writers who wrote the amazing song show up, and they do the song again alongside her. It's magical. It's a great song when you need to connect with your feelings about a breakup!


Thanks for reading!

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Photo credits: All of the photos in this post were taken by me with my iphone and belong to me, unless otherwise noted.

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