The Day the Music Died -- Michal's Story

a guest post by the fabulous Michal Jones-Stewart

My entire life has been linked to music. It is my life blood and my soul. My earliest memories are of my Mother finding the money for me to belong to a children’s record club so I could listen to music.

The music becomes one with me. It died four years ago, though, when my husband Rodney departed on the journey I couldn’t go on.

There had been patches before -- sad times in my life when I just couldn’t listen to music. I was always able to come back -- it would return in rather short order too.

My base is classical but what I love is everything -- blues, rock, R&B, jazz, soul, big band, hip-hop, swing, be-bop -- it doesn’t matter. I breathe music. I miss it, I want it but my soul is unable to listen to anything with words. I am STUCK. I can’t listen to songs with words and it’s the one thing I want back. I want to be able to become one with a song again. I want my breath to be the music and to soar with notes.

I have a collection of vinyl, cassettes and CD’s. They’re all on my cloud players and I can pick and choose which ever one I want but I can’t. I can’t listen to anything with lyrics -- only the music without. The ones with words, the sad songs, the happy songs, the soothing songs, they all make me cry. They take me back to some time, some place when I was with Rodney or after Rodney or even before Rodney and it makes me sad that I was with someone else and not him.

This is making me crazy!

I want to jump and dance and sing off key with the music. I want to hear the new Emily Lou Harris album, or listen to Paul Simon or Captain Beefheart, or Carly Simon, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt with Nelson Riddle, Celtic Women, Moody Blues, Tull, Jefferson Airplane, Zeppelin, Richie Havens, CSN, Who, Rolling Stones. All of them. I just want to be able to go back to my music where I could listen in peace without crying.


Michal and Rodney's song was/is, Feels Like Home -- Linda Ronstadt

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Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. -- Shakerpeare (or as TAB refers to him Willy the Shake)

There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand. -- Dante

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey, -- Kenji Miyazawa

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief? -- William Blake

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.  -- Jacques Prévert

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Michal Jones-Stewart, AKA The Balm of Idaho, is a dear friend of mine. It seems unimaginable that we met just a few short years ago.
At right is Heike, me and Michal in Pittsburgh, the day after my mother's funeral.