This song. This concept. This idea. It’s overused. But when dissected, it continues to ring so very true.
We used this song at our wedding reception entrance. My husband and I both loved Journey, and this genre had composed much of our childhoods and our parents’ music. Isn’t it funny how, when we are young and innocent, we compose ideas that we have no idea how true they may become? But what’s more, isn’t it “funny” how deeply memories can run and how random circumstances align to bring them all to the front?
At night, somehow our family transitioned from singing songs to playing songs on YouTube, often classical, as part of our daily bedtime routine. My husband insisted on beginning to teach them the classics, and it stuck…a little too hard. They now request two of three songs. Every. Night. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m a sucker for tradition, repetition, and consistency. But…well…the songs get played out. As an episode of HIMYM depicted in a long road trip and a stuck car cassette tape, “it comes around again”…and every once in awhile, the song hits.
Tonight, as I lay in bed with my oldest, our normal “quiet, in bed” song ‘Moonlight Sonata’ ended. My oldest begged me to stay another “one couple minute” before going to my middle’s bed and so, as YouTube has it, another song began. Tonight, it happened to be the third of our three…’Canon in D’, or, as my girls have dubbed it, “the marry song”.
Guys, I have listened to this song a thousand times. Honestly, likely more. It plays at Christmas. It plays at weddings. It plays in our evening routine and in our classical piano Pandora “get-the-kids-to-fall-asleep-in-the-car” playlist. Heck, it was the song I requested played as I walked down the aisle myself in lieu of the traditional wedding march. I have heard it played by piano, harp, guitar, and everything in between. But tonight…tonight, the synapses flared, connected…and punched me in the gut. Tonight, I had flashbacks of my wedding…and my dad walking me down the aisle.
It’s funny how the paths fire from there. I have fully watched my wedding video maybe one (or two) other times…the most recent being last September. (Of course, I think of my dad often, but not often in the depth of “holy crap, he’s gone” mentality…well…not as often as it used to be.) But tonight – tonight hit me like a ton of bricks. Tonight swarmed me with memories and smells and senses that I thought were lost. Experiences I thought I was no longer capable of remembering. So, of course, I went straight to our pile of CDs and watched the wedding video, slightly disappointed at the lack of footage of the classic father/daughter dance but delighted at close ups of my dad walking me down the aisle and cracking jokes. Enthralled with watching his face as he danced with my mom. Ecstatic at just seeing him be him. “Don’t Stop Believing” was our reception entrance, so of course, I watched that too, and enjoyed once again the thrill of the wedding reception entrance and the celebration that ensued. As I completed paperwork later tonight, one of my guilty-pleasure sitcom reruns (don’t judge…I was in “glee club” too…) played a flashback episode, performing “Don’t Stop Believing” with a now deceased actor in a lead part. Yes. I lost it again. For the third time this night.
But the point. To continue with the theme of seasons, my memory, my health, my mind, my emotions…they were in a winter. I couldn’t remember experiences, even with my hardest attempt. I could literally barely remember the day before in spite of practicing mindfulness even in a moment I wanted to hold, so without extreme intentionality and a direct (unknown) trigger, I could not recall a whole heck of a lot. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t process in my head, I could barely hear my own thoughts in the midst of dead silence and stillness and struggled to think things through. I honestly feared I was watching a vault close on a very deep, important, intricate, and complex part of what has always made me who I am.
A few days ago, my family and I traveled to Hampton Roads and used many of the roads and areas of our old stomping grounds…my work, our old church, routes we took, places we camped…and a flood of memories I couldn’t even fully bring to consciousness began to come. Things I never thought I’d remember and just added to the list of the “unknown life” that had been my past. A time that stress and overwhelm and extremities and changes pushed into the depths of the darkness that had become “my story” and my past.
But tonight I think I’m forming a new hypothesis of how memories…and memory recall work. Tonight gives me hope that not only is a vault not closing, but that there are areas of my brain that can still be awakened. Tonight I felt a sense that perhaps – just perhaps – those memories in times of great stress and struggle are still formed, but require something a little bit different to bring to recollection, and that there is a possibility that the person I was, the person I could be, isn’t gone at all.
Tonight, I realized that if I keep believing, I just might find me again.
There’s a song that’s hit my heart many times, knowing full well the countless times that I’ve been both the offerer and receiver. In ‘Shine the Light’, Babbie Mason sings, “In the parking lot of the coffee shop, Just the other day. She smiled and she said, “Well I’m doin’ okay” But I felt her pain. I took her hand in mine, Said, “It’s gonna work out fine”. But as she turned I wondered, did I just hand her a line?” We pat ourselves on the back, *hopefully* lift up the prayer we promised, and move on our way.