Music Speaks to My Son
I sit attentive, listening, sometimes holding my husband Ken’s hand. Emmy Lou Harris is performing. Her voice at 67 remains true; her passion for songwriting and singing still strong. Lines of unwritten poems, dialogue for scenes in a novel in process, somehow interweave with her songs as my mind goes into writer mode.
And thoughts of my eldest son are with me too. Music speaks to my son. I always had music on as a background from the time I became a mother to my eldest son
My Geography Lesson
Florida drew me through promises of no more cold winters and blizzards along with memories of time spent there with my mom. I never liked winter and winter did not act as if it cared for me, often sending me to bed with long bouts of bronchitis. My dad’s death freed me to end a troubled marriage. My dad had predicted I wouldn’t be happy in my marriage and I didn’t want to let him know he was right. After he passed away, I saved all my vacation time to be with my widowed mom.
The Gift: My Father was a Funeral Director
As to when I not only knew my father was a funeral director but understood what that meant, I think it was before I started grade school. I’d stand at a living room window to watch men carry a casket across the street into the Catholic church or watch the black hearse pull out of the driveway to go to another church. I often say I knew death before I knew life. A child with a wild imagination, I felt as if I could hear the tears of the grieving in the funeral home under our a
