Thoughtful Thursday: Songs for Remembrance

This post started off very differently this morning, but my post on grief was making me cry, so I decided I needed to change topics to something a bit less maudlin and a bit better for a holiday. So, here it goes.

This year is a year of firsts for myself and my family. 

We are coming up to the first anniversary of my Dad's ultimately fatal fall. My cat died on Christmas morning. My father passed away two weeks after that, on my mother's birthday. This has been a year of grief and getting used to life without Bella and without Dad.

It has not been easy on any of us.

Because it is almost time for the first anniversary of my Dad's fall and because I am moving away from the home that I shared with my first ever pet of my own, I am feeling very sentimental and nostalgic.

So, for this post, I think I will come up with several songs to help me remember and mourn and celebrate the lives of these two important souls in my life. Some of these will be funny, some will be sad, and others will be just plain old about Dad.

My father's favorite music was sappy love songs. He loved ABBA more than anything else for some reason. It was not part of the music of his expected timeframe based on his age, but for him, there was no greater musical perfection than The Winner Takes it All. Whenever the Mamma Mia movies are found on television anywhere, my mother still watches them - remembering my Dad and loving all the music. During the last month of his life, Dad watched those movies over and over again. The music therapist who made one visit to him listened to his lecture about ABBA and the significance of their music. My parents were 29 when ABBA won Eurovision, but this music became the most popular music that my parents every listened to...ever.

My Mom's musical preferences are groups like the Kingston Trio and the Irish Rovers. Dad was a bit more eclectic in his tastes, but, like I said, sappy love songs were his thing. He associated Unchained Melody with his romance with my mother. She was less tied to the music as "their song," but Dad would steer my Mom around the room whenever he heard the music start off.

One of my favorite memories of my Dad was from before I moved back here to Kansas. We were driving home from his workplace one afternoon, and he pulled up behind me in his car and was singing something. Being my Dad, he did not have a CD player, so I knew he was listening to the radio. I started to search through Dad's typical stations and kept going until I found the match to his singing - the lip synch matched. It was a song that I didn't know, but that I found out later was Someday Soon sung by Judy Collins. The visual of my big, burly Dad singing a song that sounded like Judy Collins struck me as hysterical, so I laughed all the way home.

Now, this song fits within my Dad's expected music exposure and experiences. It was released in 1969 when Dad was 24. It was not a song that he had shared with me. I would have been between 24 and 26 at the time. This song is forever linked with my Dad for me. I will never hear it without giggling about the visual of Dad singing as I listened to Judy Collins.

For my baby cat, the best songs were the whistled ones. She protested every single time I whistled. It was my surefire way of getting attention from the Boo-Belle. If I whistled, she would come. She really "sang" along when I whistled Amazing Grace. I'm not sure why she REALLY responded to that one, but she did. Whenever I whistle, I half expect her to come running to yell at me.

So, my remembrance music consists of ABBA songs, Someday Soon, and whistling.

There you go.

I hope that you have a wonderful Thursday and, if you are in the States, I hope that you can enjoy a good holiday!