Loved Me Most of All

Loved Me Most Of All

My family is a talented one. Or was. Depending on how you look at it. September is a rough month for me - my birthday is shared with the most tragic event in US history. A day I really thought I was going to die - my job having been only two blocks from the White House as the plane missed it and plowed into the Pentagon instead. And the two most important people in my existence were born in Septemeber, my grandmother and grandfather, birthdays 9/9 and 9/4, respectively. And they are both passed on.

So the month of September finds me alone, remorseful, longing and missing. This Sunday it was magnified. As I drove home from church, the old gospel song "Tomorrow" filtered through radio waves. My Uncle Joe, the youngest of my grandparents 9 kids, and undoubtedly the favorite, used to sing that song like an angel. The culmination of a multitalented family, he attended college on a music scholarship. His pure falsetto could make a grown man cry like a baby, his rich alto made women act a fool. And he sang Tomorrow at my cousin Teddy's funeral. When Cousin Teddy was mysteriously killed in a car accident in his 30's. Another unthinkable devastation.

The song came on the radio, my mind flipped back to Uncle Joe, to the patient love and creative influence he had on my life. On how I adored him. He played the guitar, I listened, hummed along learned music. Later I picked up the piano. Wanting to compliment his instrumentation. I thought of his melodic voice. And my heart split in half, remembering, with a start, that he dropped dead two years ago, walking into church. Inexplicably. Something I often fool myself into forgetting.

Those who loved me most of all are all dead.

And I am left here to grapple with life, trying to cocoon myself in their memory, in their abounding love, to face each day, each moment, despite not having them. And sometimes, it really hurts.

{Posted at www.myspace.com/discoverkai}