On Our Time Here, Our Legacy and Our Sunshine

This is not a typical Music Monday post. I'll admit that I've been a little scared to write this post. I think in my mind, I knew it could be a combination of two or three posts and it means a lot to me and so I procrastinated. Here I am though. If you keep reading, know that while writing this, my brain has been split between laundry, dishes, beans and cornbread for dinner and two crazy boys as I wrote this. It's not the most cohesive thing I've ever written, but, hang with me. And also, I reserve the right to edit it later when I have time, like I just did right now.

First off, let me say that nothing has been more humbling to me in my life than the following: grieving and parenting. I've written here before a little bit about my life, a little bit about my story. However, to catch the rest of you up, my Dad died ten years ago when I was a young woman of 20. Dad was 54. I had been overseas for the year and made it home 17 hours before he died. Even though the septic state I found him in was shocking to me in every way, he was still alive and I got to be there when he breathed his last breath.

I am told by many that knew him well and that know me that I'm like him. They also tell me that I favor his side of the family in looks and that I look like my grandmother, his mother. Just in recent years, looking back though, I see that our dispositions, passions and interests are very similar too. Both my parents like to read, like music and like people. Dad loved those things. So do I.

Being the mother of two and watching my oldest son grow into the constantly curious and beloved boy he is, I've been thinking lately about how I am impacting and shaping him for life, specifically when it comes to music since this is a Music Monday. It's no secret that I love it. I love hearing it, seeing it, and even occasionally making it. It was a priority in our house growing up. Dad would often pick a record perfect for his mood from his collection and play it for us, sometimes dancing my Mom around the room, even when she acted like she didn't like it. He took pride in cleaning his records, playing his records and telling the stories behind them. Those stories are some of my favorite memories of him.

I started thinking about all the major influences in my life, when it comes to music. The first and foremost influence was Dad. He taught me how to play "Green Onions" on the piano when I was maybe five. I had already been playing piano for a year by then. In the car, he would crunch his ice with his teeth and rap his right hand on the console between us to the beat, but especially to those songs that really got to him. I used to sit there and watch him feel it.

Dad really liked rock-and-roll. He was an even bigger Beatles fan than I am. He loved jazz and soul like Ray Charles and Dave Bruebeck. He was white, no doubt about it, but he had the soul of a brother deep down inside him. I think that's where I get it too.

Mom is a country girl through and through. When she drives up here for a visit, her car stereo is usually playing some country radio station. She likes old hymns, she likes Hank Williams and she likes Johnny Cash. She also likes the newer "pop" country. That's where I stop being able to hang with her. Dad couldn't handle the twang like she can. Folk, yes. Twang, no. I get that love of a simple folk song from her, I believe.

My sister is eleven years older than I am. She was a child of the 70's. That makes her an 80's teenage connoisseur of rock music. I get my knowledge and love of Billy Joel, the Police, the Carpenters, Tina Turner and Jane Fonda workouts, from her. Her high school boyfriend, Bob, worked at the record shop in the mall. He drove a Firebird and smoked Marlboro Reds. I always thought Bob was cool. My mom, did not.

And then, there's my brother. He got that same soul from Dad. He likes his music to thump and thump so loud you can feel it in your chest. I believe I was exposed to rap and hip-hop mostly from him. 2LiveCrew, NWA, RunDMC, Beastie Boys and Wu Tang Clan are all things I never would have heard, had it not been for him. While he likes his beat, he also is really well-rounded in liking old stuff, indie stuff and just good music in general. And, thank goodness for that. P.S. He totally wore a Starter jacket in junior high.

To keep with the family theme here, there are my two cousins, Amy and David. Amy was born in '74, my brother, Michael '76, David '77 and me '78. That made us all one year apart in school. Since I was the youngest of all of us, that gave me the perfect place to watch and listen when it came not only to music, but also when it came to life. They didn't mean to teach me through their successes and failures, but they did. I'm grateful.

We had a rare closeness for cousins. I've said this here before, but they were as close to me as brothers and sisters might be, can be, could be. Amy was the oldest of us younger four. When I was about 14, she gave me a tape with Willie Nelson, Bob Marley and some others that I can't remember now. "Whiskey River" had never taken my mind before Amy told me it could and later would. Life's journey took her down a punk rock road and toward the boys that like to skateboard. And, she married the best one alive. The rest of us kind of followed that way in some way or another. That too, the punk rock scene, shaped me and the music I listened to.

I remember David going through a phase of liking classic rock. I rode to Central High summer school with him every morning that one summer he went through that phase. We seriously rocked some Led Zeppelin in his maroon-colored CJ-7. It would play so loud, I couldn't even hear myself think. I just sat there in the passenger seat listening, trying to teach myself how to properly inhale a cigarette.

So, to bring this all back around to grieving and parenting - music. In Estonia, as I grieved the news of my Aunt Angie's advanced breast cancer diagnosis, the passing of friends Wade and Katy, and the news that I'd be coming home early from an experience I wasn't quite ready to leave - music. After the phone call, scrambling to get me packed through the night and on a plane the next day with a DiscMan full of new batteries, I switched planes in Copenhagen - more music. I got off that plane in Little Rock and was taken straight to the hospital and although jet-lagging, it was morning to me. I got all the courage I could to go into that ICU room and sit in the quiet with my unresponsive father. There was so much I was dying to tell him.

So, I did just that. Sitting bedside, holding his hand, I told him about my year. In between asking him to stay, I'd rest my forehead on his knuckles and then beg for him to stay. A nurse had come in and encouraged me to talk to him because they say that your brain is the last organ to go. I was convinced he could hear me. I am convinced that he heard me.

At one point I delicately pulled myself up toward him so as not to disturb all the tubes, and tenderly kissed his forehead. Please wake up I begged and prayed. I wanted to put my face right next to his and keep it there, but I was afraid of hurting him somehow so I didn't. So, I sat back down in my chair in disbelief that this was happening. In the early hours of the morning, I sat close by his bed and sang to him a thing that he would sometimes say to me whether as a goodbye or signing off in an email. I sang to him, "You Are My Sunshine."

If you click that link, it takes you to Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's duet of this classic. That picture of the record above is a gloriously old two-sided Johnny Cash record. It was my dad's.

It's hard to write this. I hope that Y'all would understand and get from this how precious this life is. I had 20 years with that man who called me his Sunshine. That's not near long enough, but in those years under his wing, he left a distinct mark on me, a stamp of a very real thing that was born out of what he was passionate about, his love of music. I can't complete this post without adding that his love of music spilled out into his faith. He served as a volunteer worship coordinator at his church until the very end. This picture is of him at church, serving, and was given to me by my cousin, Amy, in this frame she found.


Words don't do justice to how grateful I am for the legacy that was left for me through my father's life. While too short, I was certainly molded and blessed by it and was shown the importance of how precious life is. Thanks, Dad. Love and miss you. To pieces.