Issue #65: When You Don't Listen to Music At All

And the Dead Mom Country Songs Just Don't Cut It

By Marissa

There have been many surprises, mostly all unwelcome, that have showed up since my mother died in late June. The one that relates to this newsletter and why I’m writing here, in a forum that’s supposed to be about songs and singers and not my own personal grief, is the one where the music just stopped and all I wanted to hear was the sound of the air.

“But country music has so many good songs about grief.” I know. Hell, if I wanted to Google it I’m pretty sure there are several lists of 10 Great Country Songs About Grief and maybe even one I wrote myself for 50 bucks a blurb. There are probably lists of Great Country Songs About Dead Moms because the internet is nothing but efficient, and there are a lot of great country songs about dead moms. With this I cannot argue. It is probably the genre that does the Dead Mom thing best.

But I didn’t listen to any of them. I haven’t listened to any of them. Which makes for a bad narrative when you have a newsletter to write, because nobody wants to hear about the air.

The narrative of this grief is not working nicely in my head in general, and I very much like a clean narrative. When a friend drowned when I was sixteen, I turned quickly and readily to music to help massage out the kinks, like a magnet across the skin looking for pain to grab on to, as if the process would help release it all faster. And that was fine – people expect teenagers to be a total mess. But now I don’t need anything to release the pain; it’s there, bursting, but everything about my adult life means I must stuff it back in and go about my day, feed the kids, drive to the soccer field, text the mom about the playdate, buy the groceries, do the work, send the invoice, pay the bills. I don’t need a release, I need a cork. Music activates the scratch and sniff sticker, and I can’t let anyone on to my scent.

I am a scratch and sniff sticker and I am a foam mattress pad. I swear I can explain it: a few years ago we bought a fold out couch that is almost as hard as the floor, and, for our very infrequent guests, we also purchased a foam mattress topper than came in a small plastic storage bag. When I went to fold the thing back up after said infrequent guest, it took me about an hour of folding, squishing, mashing to get it anywhere near back in the bag, and I ended up throwing it in the closet half-stuffed and protruding, one false move from popping out. I am one bad fold away from losing it. One scratch away from smelling. I just can’t listen to dead mom country songs yet.

I didn’t listen to any recorded music over the three days my brother and I sat at the hospice and watched our mom die, except for about thirty minutes on the Apple “acoustic chill” playlist because I needed a break from the sound of the breathing – a loud, phlegmy roll like the worst snore you can conjure, except there’s never going to be a waking up and your entire body tenses between each one waiting for the next, wondering if it will actually come. Despite an entire career built on music I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to listen to in those moments, maybe because I didn’t want something I loved associated with something so terrible. “Acoustic chill” didn’t help me chill, but it did give me a brief break from the rattle. At one point my brother played his banjo, and that was the calmest I felt the whole time – a familiar sound, from a familiar person, but no particular song I could put my finger on.

Dying in a hospice is like childbirth in the worst way possible. One way in, one way out. I never went into labor with my own children but this is what I imagine it being like – the nurse comes in every now and then and checks for signs that things are “progressing.” How’s the breathing? Are there lines forming on the legs, is there a temperature? Are the toes cold? Except we are not waiting for life. We are waiting for one to be over. Do the Dead Mom country songs sing about that? When I was planning for my natural labor that didn’t happen, I made a playlist: it still sits in my Spotify account, unused. I ended up listening to air then too I guess, but air cut by the sound of a baby crying is a different kind of air.

There is no clean resolution yet, and I’m sorry. I’m listening to music again, but it’s slow, like learning to walk. The song that is my little Fisher Price trainer is “Who I Am” by Johnny Blue Skies, aka Sturgill Simpson: “been going through changes and finding clarity, and comfort in just knowing nothing ever stays the same.” I haven’t found that comfort yet, but I see it on the horizon. I want to learn about how to get there, because I know more than ever now that nothing ever stays the same, and nothing turns out like you think it will. The music you think will work doesn’t cut it; you cry when you’re supposed to laugh and laugh when you’re supposed to cry. You think you’ll want a Dead Mom song and you’ll just want silence, and then you’ll want existential country music made in Paris (I know some of you have asked for a dedicated Johnny Blue Skies post and I promise I will get there, when I can go from a walk to a run). But sometimes the air sounds the best, because maybe you can fill it with whatever you want to, whatever left over voices are still ringing in your head. The sound of a baby crying, the sound of your mother hollering from the kitchen for you to get up for school. Not songs, but the sounds of your life. I’m listening for them.