Music To Die By

She was dying, that much was clear.  It was not a jarring eventful kind of expiration accompanied by sirens, triage, and defibrillators.  It was instead the steady inexorable dissolution of dementia where first the mind and then the body slowly shrivel like a dessicated December apple still bound to the branch long after the juicy ripeness of September is past.  After several years of decline she was bed-bound, bereft of speech, and almost completely unresponsive.  Her once remarkable intellect had withdrawn and was replaced by a frightening void that left her disoriented and inarticulate.  

However, by contrast, her ever-vibrant spirit burned even brighter from somewhere within.  Though somewhat subsumed into a deeper less-accessible place, the sweetness of her soul was condensed and concentrated from what had been a nice nectar to a rich honey by the evaporative effects of her disease.  You sensed this from the glow in her eyes as they'd lock with yours for a few seconds when you'd visit--in those moments she seemed to see beyond your public facade to the very core of you but somehow you sensed that she loved you anyway.  You also glimpsed it occasionally in the fleeting heart-melting smiles that began at the corners of her eyes and spread to her still-beautiful lips.  More than fifty years earlier those lips had sung me sweetly to sleep with loving lullabies.  Now they were mostly mute.  

The other thing that endured, beside her love for people, was her love of music.  Each of my visits included a stint with my guitar singing her songs we had sung together for years.  In the early years of her dementia she could still sing some of the words.  Later she would beat the rhythm with her hand.  Even toward the end, when she was bed-ridden and lost in the fog of her illness, whenever I sang she grew less agitated and watched me with a peaceful gaze.  

I sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and we had just completed the recording of Mack Wilberg's "Requiem".  Requiem is the Latin word for "rest" (sometimes rendered as "peace") and is traditionally a musical composition setting the text of the Latin funeral mass which pleads with God for rest for someone who has died.  Notable compositions have been written by Mozart, Verdi, Dvořák, Duruflé and Fauré.  Mack Wilberg departed from the traditional exclusive use of the Catholic liturgical texts and added favorite scriptures as well as other moving texts so his Requiem would be one "that honors the dead and comforts the living."  During the summer of 2006 Mack had ensconced himself for three weeks in an historic farmhouse in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts to compose this work.  The result was a composition for choir and orchestra that is a sublime sojourn for the soul.  We performed it as an Easter concert and later recorded an album of this remarkable Requiem.

One Sunday near the end of her life we were visiting mom (Linda, the girl,s and I would stay with her while dad went to church).  She was bed-ridden and that day she was agitated and yelling out incoherently.  I decided to try out our recently-recorded Requiem on mom.  From the moment I placed the ear-buds in her ears and turned on the music she calmed down, her eyes focused upward, and her face took on a peaceful glow.  She listened quietly to the entire album.  She actually seemed to glow toward the end of the it. After I took the player back I re-listened to the final number on the album which is titled “Let Peace Then Still The Strife” (hear the music and read the lyrics in the embedded video below) and is a collaboration between Mack Wilberg and his good friend and noted lyricist David Warner.  It is both a benediction to the well-lived-lives of those we love who pass away, and an anthem of hope for those of us left behind.  In the context of mom’s imminent death that piece pierced the protective plating of my customary composure and I wept.

I am convinced that Heaven is filled with stirring music (e.g. Heavenly hosts sang at Jesus’ birth and will sing again at His second coming) and if that is so it seems appropriate that the significant bridge events between heaven and earth such as births and deaths should be likewise accompanied by the most glorious music we can find.  Accordingly, she sang lullabies to me at my birth to welcome me here, and in the very last hours of her life most of mom’s family gathered around her bed and sang her home with hymns and favorite songs.  What a wonderful way to come into and go out of this world.  May we all be so blessed.