On my way to a Final Thursday fiction reading one evening last fall with my windows rolled down, the music was at an annoying (I’m sure) volume enveloping me and spilling out into the streets of Cedar Falls. Some songs I sang along with at top voice. Others I just sat with, as I did with this last song in the venue’s parking lot. Although I am the one singing on the recording, I hardly knew what I was singing about back then. I know more now.
My late husband Al and I wrote many songs together. “Without You” he wrote to his daughter who passed away in 1996, at fifteen, after a second heart surgery, and long before I ever met him (or had any children of my own). It was a thing I knew about him, a melancholy mood that sometimes overtook him, a relationship with his daughter he carried on in songs he wrote about her passing, and lyrics like letters to let her know he was thinking of her, he had stories to tell her, what had gone on since she left. In the time since I lost Al to cancer in 2020, I have listened hard to all the songs he wrote to and about Adee. They have taught me how to grieve.
That night I could feel him with me in the car, his voice the same, his thoughts, the scratchiness in his throat when he laughed. I turned up the volume to hear him breathe. It stunned me that he was so close. How could he be gone when all his passions, his love, his irritations, and his musings surrounded me, filling my ears, my senses, my mind?
I admit I hadn’t always listened so closely to what he wrote about, preferring to focus on creating the songs, rather than delving into what pain or joy inspired them. Now that I was unable to speak to him, to touch him, to argue with him about the dishes, I let those lyrics into my heart. I heard them with a double consciousness now that I was the one left behind. I sat for one more song before turning my key and headed in to the reading at the museum and my friends there. There was his guitar playing, and our daughter Willa’s cello lines: the moody melody cycling. With sudden clarity, I heard myself sing:
“Once, the dark stole into my dreams at night. Now, I’m learning that it may be alright.”
His words reminded me that it was okay to have new adventures, join new creative ventures, make a new life, the way Al did after Adee died.
So I started this newsletter to chronicle the journey back to the creative fire within and to be out-loud creative, in honor of all we experience and love.
Caroline, this is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your song, words, thoughts, feelings, and memories with us. Al was one of a kind. He is dearly missed by all who knew him. I’m glad you have these songs to connect with him still and that they have helped you to understand his pain (and yours) in a deeper level. Grief is forever, but hopefully the pain is not.
Caroline, I'm grateful for the opportunity to catch a glimpse into your life, with song and grief and the power of words. There is a lot to latch onto here. Thank you for sharing!