29 September 2019
A contribution to Soaring Spirits Widow’s Voice Blog – 1 October 2019
I am a new guest writer here on Soaring Spirits. I do realise that it’s a site for Widowed people. I am widowed. My husband Mike died of pancreatic cancer on 8th April 2017. He was 53.
It feels like a life time ago.
It feels like yesterday.
It feels unreal.
In addition, I have lost an amazing and one and only best platonic male friend, Don (11 September 2015) to colon cancer; a beautiful younger brother, Edward (10 January 2016) to glioblastoma; and a gorgeously beautiful, clever, funny, artistic, creative, talented youngest child, Julia (30 June 2019. Yes, 2019) to suicide.
All in the past four years. Devastation on top of wreckage after bomb blast after tsunami.
Julia took her life after deciding, 2 years and 2 ½ months after her dad’s death, that life without him was not worth living.
That was the night of 30 June/1 July this year. It’s recent. Very recent.
Yesterday. Today. And every tomorrow.
Forgive me if the deaths and losses of my daughter, brother and friend, in addition to that of Mike, my husband, somehow mish-mash and merge into my widowing story.
Because this widow’s story is amplified with pre- and after-shocks.
Late this afternoon, Sunday 29th September, a dear friend of my “middle child” (now “youngest child”), sent me three songs that she (Katie) and my daughter Megan had written, sung and performed together in their last weeks of their last year at school.
They recorded them Monday morning, 1st July 2019, after the Sunday/Monday night Julia died. Before Megan knew the news, when I was just desperate for my son Ben and me to get over to the UK to tell her, face-to-face, before social media did.
I knew that that Monday morning, after her school exams had finally finished, that they would be recording these three songs with “professional” school recording equipment. I didn’t want to shatter her day with the news.
One of the songs, “Pa”, I had heard a version of previously, recorded on mobile phones. But until yesterday I hadn’t heard the full suite of songs. This is the outcome.
“Disappear”
“Pa”
“Palpitations”
“Pa” is about Megan’s love for her dad. Mike. She was 9 days away from her 16th birthday when he died. She is now 18 and has started university. It’s about how much she misses him. It’s about how much she misses him more with each passing day. It’s about how she wishes he could see who she is becoming. It’s about missing witnessing the beautiful proud smile on his cheek as he watched her bloom.
It’s heart-rending.
Listen to it.
Megan also inserted an audio recording of some goofing around we did at Kidderminster train station in the UK during the summer of 2012. We were heading to London to see the play Matilda. The girls, Megan & Julia were trying to crash through the wall at Platform 9 ¾. Without success. Mike wandered over and played Dobby. Our son Ben, now 20, looked on with patient amusement. And I – behind the camera – sound harried and hurried. A caption, a recording, footage of a life, LIVES cut way too short.
Here’s the song
And the video clip from 2012 with sweet Mike, baby Julia, beautiful Ben and magnificent Megan
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h4d3bfr7a425rh5/Platform%209%203%3A4.MOV?dl=0
And the lyrics, below, complete with chords
“Pa”
G Em C D
Time has passed since you have gone
And now we’re living on our own
Our melody still standing strong
With one voice you’re coming home to me
G Em C D
I wish you could see the person I’ve become to be
And now I wish I could see
The smile you’d have upon your cheeks
G Am B Em/B
But dad you know I feel so alone
C D
And I’m falling and tumbling and don’t know where to go
Em D C
And pa I just want you to come home
G Em C D
I’m older now I understand we live we die it comes hand in hand
Your spirit carries on along while guiding us we follow on
G Em C D
I wish you could see the person I’ve become to be
And now I wish I could see the smile you’d have upon your cheeks
G Am B Em/B
But dad you know I feel so alone
C D
And I’m falling and tumbling and don’t know where to go
Em D C
And pa I just want you to come home
G Em C D
Years go on I’m still the same
I miss you more every single day
There isn’t anyone to blame
And life goes on and that’s okay to me
G Em C D
I wish you could see the person I’ve become to be
And now I wish I could see the smile you’d have upon your cheeks
G Am B Em/B
But dad you know I feel so alone
C D
And I’m falling and tumbling and don’t know where to go
Em D C
And pa I just want you to come home
G F#/D Am G
G F#/D Em
C Bm C D Em
G F#/D G
G Em C D
I wish you could see I’m growing up beyond your dreams
And now I wish I could see how we could have turned out to be
G Am B Em/B
But dad you know I feel so alone
C D
And I’m falling and tumbling and don’t know where to go
Em D C
And pa I just want you to come home
B R E A T H E
You have way too much of my life in this blog post.
