Sick chicken

At home in day two of a nasty cold. Antibiotics, mucinex (made of angel tears, according to my friend Jamie) and nonstop neti pot between now and my two concerts this weekend. I will get better. I WILL.

How Glory Goes

There's this great song from the musical "Floyd Collins," a lesser-done work by Adam Guettel about a guy who tries to make his fortune turning a cave into a tourist attraction and subsequently loses his life from the endeavor. I don't think it did very well, but the best damned song in the show ended up as the title of an Audra McDonald album that's completely worth checking out if you don't know it. As Floyd is stuck there, contemplating the end of his life, he asks all kinds of questions about the afterlife and what it looks like. Specific questions, like:

Do we live?
Is it like a little town?
Do we get to look back down at who we love?

Today is All Souls' Day. Yesterday was All Saints' Day/All Souls' Eve. At my church, we read out the names of those who have died during the year, in remembrance. I'm always taken by surprise at how much this affects me. Thinking about the people in my life who have passed on, thinking about the notes they sent me, the conversations we had, places we went. Most recently, it was Miss Jeanne, from my old congregations in Hattiespatch. She was so lovely. Her late husband, TB, sang in the church choir when I was the director. TB could not sing a round vowel to save his skin, but he sure did try every little trick I asked of him. They were wonderful, generous people in my life. They established a scholarship at the church and about a week after TB's death, they announced that I was the first recipient. Just before I was supposed to get up and sing 'Schlafendes Jesuskind.' It was all I could do to hold it together. Miss Jeanne has struggled with illness for a little while and I knew she wasn't doing well when she didn't return my birthday note. I was back down there not too long ago and considered going to see her, but one of our mutual church friends said that she wasn't really conscious much, kind of hazy from the pain medicine, and did I really want to remember her that way. I think of Miss Jeanne, hopping out of her white cadillac, insisting that we had to go get frozen custard, talking about how mischievous TB was. That's how I remember her - vibrant, funny, full of love and kindness.

Last night, on the way home, my husband asked me to talk about what I believe in terms of an afterlife. Do I believe that people pass on and hang out in heaven, waiting for the rest of us to show up and join the party? Do they look down on us?

As he asked me this, I started to hear this song in my head, asking those same questions. Is it like a little town? Is my grandmother up there, playing canasta with her friends and making her toilet paper cover-dolls to sit on the back of the toilet? Is my grandfather fiddling with his workshop and hollering to her across the room and still protesting that he won't eat vegetables? Gosh I hope so. When I think about my loved ones, the feelings come back so strongly that I go hunting for that piece of jewelry, the flavor of ice cream, that piece of clothing, anything that I can press into my hands that reminds me of them. Avon discontinued the liquid deodorant that my mother's mother used to wear, but there was a time when I would smell it on a total stranger and be completely swept out of my reality, back into her floral room with the armchair and the bags of yarn and quilt scraps, candy wrappers hidden in the cushions. They are still there, if only in my head and in my heart, but doesn't that make them still there? If they were once here, then aren't they always?

Only heaven knows how glory goes, what each of us was meant to be. In the starlight, that is what we are.

I send you my love. Save me a seat at the card table.

Just a quickie

Three services today. Went running between, have a bit of a wheezy chest now....

For all the saints who, from their labours, rest.