Funny Thing About Music...

The four of us were in Geez's van, I think, heading for the funeral parlor to finalize the arrangements for our dad's viewing. A cold, bright "Black Friday", we were all a little groggy from the night before. Dad had waited until we were all in town, until we had all had our Thanksgiving meal, until all of the kids had whispered good-bye and gone off to bed, to finally take his last breath. We were in the dining room, playing movie trivia, so I expect the last sounds he heard were the four of us and my sister-in-law yelling out names of movies -- "Citizen Kane!", "Ben-Hur!". My dad might've even been playing along in his head, beating each and every one of us at this game -- he loved movies about as much as he loved us, as much as he loved his cats.

So we're in the van, and Bug, the youngest of us, says "Hey, you guys want to hear this CD? I'm playing this all the time now, and I think you'll really like it -- especially this one song...".

In my mind, we're in the van, and it's cold, and I'm sad, and I'm listening to "White Winter Hymnal" by Fleet Foxes, and I keep seeing my dad in his final days -- a little baby-bird of a man, so frail, so small -- not at all like the dad I knew growing up. And I remember a song he sang to me when I was little, something about "saucy little chickadees" in winter snow.

Recently a friend posted on facebook that she was listening to "White Winter Hymnal" and dancing around her kitchen. I don't think I'll ever dance when I hear this song.