Music has always been a big part of my life. Not that I am at all an accomplished musician myself. Oh, I took piano for six years and I can read music, but I have no talent for playing. I can stay on key if I stand beside another alto, but no one is clamoring for me to sing a solo at their wedding.
Still, I love music. We always had music in our house when I was growing up. My dad had a beautiful voice and played guitar. He was in a local band when he was young. He was the song leader in church before he became a fulltime minister and he was quite often asked to sing solos at weddings.
Daddy sang mostly classic country music, bluegrass, old timey gospel, and traditional hymns. Most evenings after supper he would pull out his guitar and play and sing while Mama graded papers and my brother and I did homework or bickered over whose turn it was to pick what to watch on TV.
When I got a little older, I had my own radio and record player in my room and I would tune in to a rock station or play albums by the Eagles, Doobie Brothers, Chicago, or (okay, I admit it) Barry Manilow.
After I was married and my daughters came along, music continued to be the background sound of our lives. Sing-alongs were mandatory on long road trips, often with the windows down and the girls bopping in their seatbelts to Rockin’ Robin. They spent summers with my parents and learned the old songs their granddaddy played and sang.
When Rachel was a teenager, she discovered a stack of record albums I had from high school and college and saved her allowance to buy a nice record player. One evening she burst from her room and excitedly asked us if we had heard of this guy Billy Joel and the song “Piano Man.” Why yes, we said, we are familiar with that song.
She continued her love of music through college, broadening her tastes to include bluegrass, American standard crooners like Frank Sinatra, country rock singers like John Denver. She introduced me to Nina Simone, whose rendition of “To Love Somebody” was Rachel and her husband’s courtship song.
At her memorial service the worship band played her favorite old gospel tunes – “I’ll Fly Away” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” I’m sure those songs had never been sung before in that church full of Gen Xers and Millennials.
Sometimes when I’m in the car by myself I’ll sing loud like the girls and I did and I’ll let the tears roll freely down my face. I know she’s singing in Heaven with her granddaddy, but I sure miss our melodramatic, off-key sing-alongs to Queen on the way to school.
On my recent road trip with my younger grandson, we were blasting classic rock on the backroads of Alabama. “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on. John said, “Oh, I know all the words to this song. Aunt Rachel taught me!”
Music to my ears.
Laura
A Light for My Path 
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