Then Sings my Soul...

It's been a tough week, and it's only Tuesday.

Sunday night, around 9:30 pm, my Nana (my Dad's mom) passed away. She'd had a stroke about a week before. This loss is made harder I think, by that fact that we so recently lost my Grandma (my Mom's mom), and are still recovering from that.

They were both very special, and very different ladies. My Nana was from the South, and when I heard her speak (she was a woman of few words) she always had a bit of that Southern twang. She raised five children in a small two bedroom house (which she still lived in up until her death, thanks to the care of my Uncle Steve). She was a tall woman, at least in comparison to my Pop-pop (his nickname was "Shorty" to be fair), and a constant uncomplaining caretaker (always making sure everyone was fed before she herself sat down and ate).

While, like I said, she wasn't a big talker, she was quick to smile, and it was always sweet and genuine. Even though she lived a long life, she was 87 when she died, its still hard to lose her.

Yesterday my family spent the day together, enjoying each other's company and support. But last night I spent some hours alone, and realized I was grieving more than I had really acknowledged.

I've recently reclaimed my cello from my parents' house and last night all I wanted to do was play. Unfortunately 4 years of sitting in a basement has made my cello nearly impossible to tune, and I haven't yet taken it to a shop to get it checked out and tuned up (this is on the schedule for this week). So I tuned to the next best option: listening to music. And through my Pandora Duhks station, I came across a collaboration between Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer. The combination of Bela Fleck on the banjo and Edgar Meyer on the bass really grabbed me, and I found myself able to sink into the music and nourish my soul...



Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name