If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On!
St Patrick’s Day was the day that my family and I went into isolation.
I love all days that I can theme. I can’t cook but I can theme. I’ve heard people say that those who can’t cook theme, well my mantra has always been ‘those who can’t theme cook’. I’m not great at cooking, but over the recent years, good food and a good portion of love have been at the top of life’s shopping list. Well most St Patrick’s Days I’ll have a little stroll down memory lane with some of my late mam’s favourites. I always try to watch Finian's Rainbow (a very powerful film actually - definitely worth a revisit) and have a bit of a dance to The Dubliners Seven Drunken NIghts’. You know the one ‘ Oh, as I went home on Monday night as drunk as drunk could be…..’. However this year I didn’t sing or dance. I forgot about St Patrick's day. I watched the news and reeled in horror at the hoards of partygoers bunched together in celebration.
I watched the news ravenously, digesting every morsel. The news wasn’t something I avidly consumed. For a long time I had felt that I was only viewing the world through one window, I wanted to see more so I started to search out news stories from different sources. But here I was, hooked again, I felt like a news addict I needed to consume every bit of what was happening in the world. All of it. I surprised myself actually. I hate bills, anything to do with finance and I’m completely bored by housework, anything that strikes fear into me I usually try to avoid. The coronavirus did strike fear into me. No, not fear, shock. I was shocked by what was happening in the world and I was transfixed. I had to know everything that was happening in the world. I couldn’t turn away.
Not only could I not turn away, but I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to run and there was no escape. This feeling I remembered. What does this remind me of? I’ve felt this before. I know this feeling. Then I remembered. It was the same feelings I had felt when my wife had been through her courses of chemotherapy. She has had cancer twice and treatment on several occasions, in separate years. This was the feeling I felt, the fear of bringing a virus back to her. It was the same feeling, but this time there was no time limit. It wasn’t just getting through the next three months until after the treatment was finished. No,there was no deadline for this to end. I felt the same fear as I did then, would she catch a virus that her immune system and her failed heart could not cope with?
At this moment in our lives there was no room for anything else but protecting my family, not only my wife but also my daughter. I wanted to keep them safe and at this point that was all that mattered. Music was not at the top of my agenda, that was until I heard music again. I heard Italian voices singing out with gusto ‘Volare! Whoa Oh!’ - and then I smiled. Their voices were like little green shoots of hope emerging from barren land. Next came police strumming guitarists and soprano rooftop concerts. I heard music again. I saw the outside world again and I thought this world is still full of love and this is me, this is the world that I want to be a part of. I didn't want to live in fear anymore, I wanted to live in love.
We did get through the chemo together. With a guilty heart I confess that yes we still argued, but we also smiled and belly laughed. We lived in hope, not fear and to be truthful with you, to this very day I maintain this is the only way to live.
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness” Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014).
Thank you for today.
Italians Sing Volare, National Anthem to Lift Spirits Amid Coronavirus Lockdown