Songs From the Dead

At its core, this blog is an attempt to understand and implement the power of resiliency. I’m sure I can find the dictionary definition of that word, but what does it mean really?

I spent a lot of time trying to boil it down, and I decided that resiliency means trust. No matter what happens, do I trust that it will not defeat me? No matter what happens, do I trust that the love I feel is real, even when I feel pummeled by my losses? Do I trust that death, the loss of the destination at which to aim yourself, a loss of your health, the death of your work, is not the end of Life? And, yes, I capitalize Life on purpose.

When I lived with my Beloved, I often woke to the sound of him singing. He was Muslim, and every morning before dawn he chanted prayers. It’s a lovely sound to awaken to. He had other songs as well, including unintentionally hilarious freestyle raps, but it’s this song to God that I miss most now that he’s gone.

Before he died, I never gave much thought to the songs of dead singers. Yes, I remember the deaths of people like Marvin Gaye (shot by his father), Tammi Terrell (brain tumor), and Donny Hathaway (out the window). Most recently, Aretha Franklin (cancer) was silenced. But the music was the thing. But since the death of my Beloved, when I hear a song from those who are gone, new meaning emerges. What does it mean when songs of life are delivered to me from dead lips?

In a way, my Beloved’s end was the beginning of a major downhill slide for me. Even though I had been suffering symptoms of multiple sclerosis for four years by the time he left me, it was after he killed himself that what had been merely inconvenient became frightening. And more frightening still was opening my eyes in the mornings, alone in that bed, listening for his voice.

But he was gone and I began falling. In the kitchen while cooking dinner. In the hallway while trying to get to the bathroom. In the bedroom and lying on the floor all night. In my office, twisting my leg under a piece of furniture and fracturing it. What does resiliency mean in the face of this kind of disability? What does it mean when your heart has been torn out and your body has given way?

There’s a song on one of my playlists by Donny Hathaway: A Song for You. I’m always a huge, grieving knot by the time it ends. The dead have gone we know not where, and we have all been transformed. I may yet become a mystic who swims, but the lessons have only begun and the water is cold.