The Music Of The Night

Of course, I’m afraid. Aren’t you?

Mom said she wasn’t, but I can’t remember her ever being frightened of anything. Or maybe that’s only what she pretended.

I know the day I said goodbye to him, I thought, I won’t be afraid anymore. I’ll just wait for him to come back and bring me with him.

Then the years drifted by, lonely but busy, and the fear began to slowly but ever so surely creep back.

Maybe I feel it more this spring because the winter brought more than snow; It carried loss in its clutches. When it left, it took three I knew and loved away with the melting flakes. As one of their children said, “Do we ever have “enough” time.”

And I had no answer.

I don’t believe faith in an afterlife has any connection with fear of the unknown. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t intimidated by a new experience.

Probably, as a child it was my first visit to Dr. Chatowitz, the local dentist, who didn’t believe in sweet air or Novocain or calming chatter. Rather he was efficient and precise, and consequently, my teeth have survived throughout a relatively long lifetime.

Those Tuesday visits alone to a second floor one room office on West 51st street were probably the first time I experienced the reality of being frightened and also learned the necessity of facing the unknown.

Probably the second time was saying goodbye to my young husband and finding myself experiencing childbirth in a bleak hospital setting in Lakewood, Ohio. There was no way to turn back time and I really didn’t want to do that; but I wanted the terrifying experience to be over. The sisterhood of natural childbirth had not infiltrated my world or those of other young brides, and I was terrified. Of course, the joyous consequence of that long day and a half is a daughter who has enhanced everyday of my world since that frightening night.

This year’s swirling winds of winter with a constant coverlet of white have recently provoked another of life’s ongoing lessons. One stormy morning as I gazed out at the seemingly endless and forbidding landscape, I turned to my Ipad for comfort and discovered the world of Apple Music.

Despite the fact that I am not musically proficient, it didn’t take long to download several playlists. Within two days I insulated my home and my heart with the protective covering of Pie Jesu and Sarah Brightsman’s gifted vocals; the comfort of Andy Williams My Sweet Lord and the joyous sound of Five Hundred Miles. Then I downloaded ever so much more and far too many other melifonious barmonies to enumerate.

Their joyous sounds wrap me in memories and blot out any lingering fears as I relive amazing, unbelievable moments in the years gone by. Then I only remember wonderment I knew after the dark of night had disappeared.....

.....The magnificence of Pinza on a moonlit night in Lewisohn Stadium when my lover was far away, and I was alone in the crowded amphitheater.

.....Years later, the joyous sounds of Felice Navidad ringing though the halls of a Clinica in Caracas as he recovered from a heart attack in the hills of Venezuela.

......Then on a beautiful September morning a soprano’s voice ringing out with the promise of Be Not Afraid, the day all who loved him said goodbye.

Now once again as the music of the night rings out, I am reminded we are never alone, and there is no. need to fear. And I realize my Mother wasn’t pretending.