Tag Archives: Music

Hymn to Him

Posted in Bereavement Advice and Support, Every day survival, Uncategorized by

Hello keyboard my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.

You're so cool. (Except perhaps in those wellies)

You’re so cool. (Except perhaps in those wellies)

And tonight I just want to riff about my husband. Thoughts of Him occupy me so completely, but I am unable to express them to anyone but this multi-buttoned musketeer. The words form on my tongue but come out stutteringly, meanderingly, without flow or point.

Besides, why would anyone want to know about how I was always so proud that it was HIM I was going home with at the end of a night?

Or how when I first met Him we used to sit smoking roll-ups til morning, stubbing them out in a Lambrini bottle, which became a brown-silted graveyard for fag ends?

Or how He played ‘Romanza’ on the guitar with the devotion of a father nurturing a child? And how we used to sing together, to our daughter, ‘Dream A Little Dream of You?

How He introduced me to JJ Cale, War of the Worlds, Robertson Davies?

Or how He spoke in a low, deep voice – slowly and without pauses?

How He drank Black Sheep bitter and would always order beef curry at the Chinese?

How our last words before bed were always: I love you pet.

How He was without doubt the most courageous and beautiful human being I have ever met, and I still can’t believe He’s gone?

“…I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzR4Agcsuh8

The sock, the genitals, the musical genius

Posted in Bereavement, Uncategorized, Young widow by
Love Sick

Love Sick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

James bloody Blunt. I wouldn’t listen to him unless my daughter (aged 5) didn’t keep asking to hear him in the car. Yes, it’s my C.D. But I was young when I bought it. And woozily in love with my husband.

I have forcibly rediscovered it and actually, I kinda like it. I’m putting that out there because this blog is about honesty and raw emotion, and though James is far cry from my main musical love, Bob Dylan, I have found myself on the motorway weeping at the profundity of his lyric. Well, OK, maybe not the profundity of his lyric, but the fact that he seems to record everything in D-Minor (the saddest of all keys), therefore rendering me a wibbling wreck.

I have talked before about Gary Barlow (the sock, the genitals, the musical genius), and the reaction he elicits from me since M’s death. But unlike M, music was never something that was hugely important in my life. I’ve always looked on in awe at people who have extensive vinyl collections and are able to talk about Northern Soul without reference to Ant n Dec. However, since He died, music has taken on new importance. I find solace in it in a way that I never have before.

Take Dylan’s lyric from If You See Her Say Hello:

And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart. She still lives inside of me, we’ve never been apart.

Listened to sung in Dylan’s inimitable plaintive warble, it is simply heart-breaking. My separation from M is akin to some kind of torture, but this one line may end up on His gravestone (if I can ever bring myself to give Him up to the grave).

Meanwhile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM