Today I present three songs, so I’ll label this as some songs that still resonate from a really terrible year. Dichotomy much? There’s something about me that finds comfort in the music that played around me when I was at my very lowest. Late 1997 into 1998 was, as anyone who knows my life story, the very worst period of my life, the period that shook my foundation and remolded me into a different person. Hollow and sad and so, so lost, I first felt the experience of being rallied around by those in my orbit. It’s when I first realized I’d had an orbit; that as lonely as I felt, I was NOT alone, not ever. Mary’s shocking and sudden death, the babies’ bereft, cried-out faces etched into my memory as if scribbled in black sharpie on the backs of my eyelids, brought about the kindness and goodness of people and, strangely, added color to my lackluster life, colors I’d never experienced. They were not pretty colors, but they were colors nonetheless and I needed to be able to fill in the blanks of my life with them from that point forward. Each day I went to work wishing it had been me in that coffin, but I kept realizing I was surrounded by people who genuinely cared about me. And the music that played behind us, though at the time may not have been so important, now sings hauntingly to me as a reminder of all those sad but beautiful colors and emotions, of being empathically carried by the people around me. Each of today’s songs reminds me of that time when, as lonely as it felt having to be among the living, I was never alone. (Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end)
From the historical writing archive. Original date: November 5, 2016. Recovered from local source material; editorial review is still in progress.