Thinking about what I'll miss about my mom, I wrote this poem about her music. I leave you with the question - what role did your mom play in the music you listened to?

Mom‘s Music

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Mom is gone, but

you can still hear her soul

Filling the room 

When her music plays.

As kids, when she taught us

“She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain” -

She gave us access to a 

Texas cowgirl’s Ruidoso nights,

The smell of ponderosa pine,

Days fly-fishing for rainbow trout, 

Family nights and the hijinks 

of watermelon teeth or charades.

We remember her at the piano,

Chopin’s Polonaise #5 connecting you 

to her cosmopolitan roots,

To the expectations of

Her high-end ancestors,

And her earnest efforts to fulfill them,

Her fingers arched 

and moving furiously.

Or holding makeshift instruments, 

Keeping pace with her accordion,

As she marched us all into

Something shaped like a parade.

Her route through the Kijabe mission 

Giving way to Smoky Springs,

Then Laurel Lodge Memory Care,

And finally to the confines

Of her own blessed wheelchair.

She sang with the passion 

Of a woman who’d been rescued - 

“How Great Thou Art”

In church with tears 

Running down her face,

Mystifying me as 

an adolescent beside her.

Mom woke us to 

States of awareness 

With her songs -

We recognized the selves 

We were becoming,

Changing in time to her melodies,

Even as we recognize

her now her by her music 

continuing on In our hearts.