My Life, Through Music, Enveloped in Love

It was Sunday morning, and I was driving south from Lewisburg, PA to Harrisburg to meet my friends Mark and Amanda, now married, for breakfast. The previous day had been full of driving and getting stuck in traffic, over 3 hours of traffic, and my patience had run thin before my show at Bucknell University in Lewisburg. I was getting sick, my ear plugged, and I was coming down with an intensely sore throat. The show was successful in that I played well, and those students who were there enjoyed themselves, but it was not an overly attentive audience or a large one to boot. I had sang for the first time in a long time so aerobically that my lungs ached, a feeling I missed and recognized as a full effort. 

The road that I was driving on snaked along the Susquehanna River, and the traffic was almost non-existent. I had driven the road in the pitch dark the night before, racing to make my show on-time, in the rain. Sunday was brilliantly sunny, with only feathery clouds making up the sky otherwise very blue. Pennsylvania still had not awoken for the Spring yet, and trees sat bare along the river, waiting for the warmer weather. It was unseasonably cool, just 35 degrees or so.

The night before I met Mark and Amanda for dinner before my show, driving the extra 90 miles or so to get to see them. It was a reunion of sorts, but also a lot of holding, hugging, and making plans. Mark and I would begin to do some business together playing weddings and functions, as he is a talented audio engineer, and more importantly, family to me. He and Amanda would make time to visit me in Brooklyn, and Mark and I would make time to share more golf outings. It became very urgent all of a sudden to remain in very close contact. We both had very heavy minds lately, well, the three of us.

Mark's father, a man I've known almost my entire life, was and still is terribly sick. His body is shutting down after a lifelong bout of diabetes, and was now in intensive care and a medically-induced coma in Maryland. A young man still, he was a tremendously successful administrative nurse, who ran operating rooms at two hospitals near Salisbury, Maryland. He was very proud, and since his kidneys shut down, and he had a pacemaker inserted in his heart, thus forcing him to go on disability, he was enormously upset and ornery, often taking his frustration out on Mark's Mom. He would say things like "What's the point of this, Cathy? I'm not even living!!" 

Amanda has lost her father a few years ago very suddenly. One of 5 children, she received a call one day that he had died while running outside in the oppressive heat at a track near her childhood house outside of Buffalo. He, too, was very young, full of life, and a remarkable man. His loss, to this day, stings even me. She and Mark have forever bonded over losing him, and you could tell how the talk of Mark's Father's illness has brought up those feelings.

I have sensed now more than ever that my parents are splitting up, and the inevitability of it all comes from my mother's lack of discussion on the topic. She treats me as an equal, and has often called me for advice, or to run her plans by me to see if she is acting reasonably. When I requested to know how things were going, she told me "not to go there" and that she did not walk to talk about it. In addition, when I told her I would not be home for Easter, she seemed more than fine with my not being there, at least outwardly. So, my suspicions are heightened, and I think she knows they are, too.

Well, there were the three of us at dinner, laughing, swapping stories, making plans, watching hockey, and all the while taking moments to update each other on the seriousness that seems to swirl around us.

Back to my drive. As the river snaked with the road, I looked to my right for the first time, and saw the might of the Susquehanna, and the life it gives to everything that touches it. I saw the sun hitting me, on the chilly day, and somehow making me very warm as I drove. I could not feel the car, now in cruise control, as it made nary a bump as I turned through each S-curve. I got a text message from Mark asking where I was, and said I would be there in 15 minutes.

I arrived at their house, to find Mark with his coat on, and Amanda still in her pajamas. I asked where we were going for breakfast, and he told me he had to leave to do a sound engineering show for a band concert, but he had waited to leave because he wanted to say goodbye to me first. He gave me a big hug and said, "I love ya, buddy, it was great seeing you!" I responded "I love you, too, man, have a safe trip and a good show." He then left. I went to breakfast with Amanda, and we spent time together for the first time since college, when she and I became incredibly close. We talked about Mark's Dad, my parents, her Father, and about me someday finding a woman. Upon my leaving to drive back to Brooklyn, she too gave me a big hug and said "I love you very much, I'm so glad you visited us." It was one of the most beautiful moments ever in my life.

That's my Takeaway now. My life, through music, completely and totally enveloped in love. I am not ashamed to tell my friends, male or female, that I love them now. And I mean it, deeply, and have done so numerous times since then. 

I am so moved by what we as people can do to each other, lifting one another up, sharing small moments and making relationships that last forever. How an hour out of my way driving will never be a burden if it is for the closeness of friendship and family, and how you take people with you for the journey, even if they live hours away.