Music in My LIfe

Even though I can't sing, and the instruments I can play, I play badly, music has always been a huge part of most of my life.  My brother was always in a symphony or a band and my parents did not believe in babysitters, so I was always around to hear him play as a child.

As a teenager, songs started to take on special meanings and associations, and still do today.  There are some songs I cannot listen to without crying because of the association they bring to mind.  Some songs just remind me of certain people in my life.  

The Beatles' "Yesterday" was dedicated to me  during art class in 8th grade as a goodbye song by David L because I was supposed to move to Kentucky over the summer.  When our house was not completed in time and I went back to school in 9th grade, the song the played for me was "Guitar Man" when I finally moved at the end of the first semester.  Cindy, my best friend, had a Bread song played for me because we spent endless hours listening to Bread while playing canasta and babysitting her sister.

I cannot hear "I Dreamed Last Night" by the Blue Jays/Moody Blues without thinking of Randy.  It was our song.  It is how he ended all his letters to me.  We had a discussion about it when we first started talking again after 30 years.

Zac Brown's "Keep Me in Mind," "Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" by B.J. Thomas, anything by Adele or Lady Antebellum all make me think of a really great friend and often make me cry.  

"Jumping Jack Flash" takes me back to a wonderful summer night in Ohio when I was visiting with my old friends.  It was the last time I saw one of them, as he died in a car crash before I could visit with him again.

The Band's "Last Waltz" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" take me back to Jan and the summer he and I dated. He was several years older than I was so dates did not mean a movie and a fast food place.  Dates with Jan were picnics with foods different than I had ever tried, and trips to Lexington to go to nightclubs or nice restaurants.  He took me to see "The Last Waltz," and "Freebird" was playing the night he left to go back to New York.  He was not a great love in my life, but I appreciated our times together.

The list goes on and on, but there is one person in my life who I have never attached any one song or band to, and that is Raymond.  Oh I hear a new song or band and wish he could hear it with me, but nothing that is just "us."  We listened to music, but it was just background noise to our conversations. I still find it odd  that I knew and dated him for four years, and we were married just shy of 24.5 years and there is not a special song.  Of course, I will never forget the time that he walked to the mall from the tire store to get me a Robert Earl Keen cd he knew I wanted even though he was already having trouble walking due to the undiagnosed tumor in his pelvic bone.  

When you get right down to the real music in my life it was Raymond. Everything he said to me was music in my ears, even when it wasn't nice, because not all songs are love songs.  He made my heart sing every day, and I'll never forget that feeling.  

I know I will never find another Raymond, but I won't settle on just any man to have a man either.

For Raymond: