Wow, I’m overwhelmed by the responses I’ve received to sharing this piece of my family. Thanks so much to Louise Foerster, Caroline DePalatis, Anne Peterson, K. Kris Loomis 📚, Donna Pailor, Danielle Nolan, Margie Berry, Tasneem Kagalwalla, Jennifer Sartore Hulst, S Lynn Knight, Tess Wheeler, Colleen Golafshan, Jazmin Cybulski and Ivana Knezevic for your individual responses – sorry not to respond individually to each of you, but as I said, I’ve been overwhelmed; I don’t think I’ve ever so many responses before!
I made reference above (in stanza 3) to a song I wrote for my mother, for her mother. If any of you are interested, I’ve posted a link to the lyric below. There is music – I originally wrote it as a short piece for piano, and then piano and violin, as a Mother’s Day gift for my mum some years ago – she had just started learning the violin, and I was trying to write something simple, but beautiful, for her. The words came a few days later, and at first I thought they were too dark. But at her request, I read them out to her that Mother’s Day, and she loved them, as they were an acknowledgement of her loss. It was something she had only recently become fully aware of – that each birthday for her was also the anniversary of her mother’s death, a deep and immeasurable loss that still haunts to this day.
And although I don’t have a recording of the music played on real instruments, here is a digital recording (from my notation software) of the version written for violin and piano (but with a clarinet sound instead), which will give some idea of the melody. One day I’ll record it properly.
