The power of music

and its dance into the spiritual realm

Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash

I listen to it music on youtube through my phone.

Sometimes songs that remind me of my family members start playing, even if/when they aren’t ones that I normally listen to.

They may not even be in the realm of my preferred genres.

Usually, they are ones that remind me of my mother.

But, yesterday, Stairway to Heaven was playing, van Halen, came on.

That is not my jam.

But, it WAS Jeremie’s.

In his pursuit of playing guitar, I recall him playing that and for hours on repeat, trying to master it.

I recall him playing it over and over, before, even before I remember him playing his guitar.

I don’t even know if I could have told you, before it started playing, that that was a piece that he liked and play.

I honestly don’t.

But when it started playing, I knew.

I remembered.

I was transported to him playing it and the association that I have with him with that song.

It brings to mind - I have assigned the Ocean Vuong book of poems, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, for my World Literature class this semester.

The first poem, Threshold, depicts the speaker’s complicated relationship with absent father.

But the theme that dissolves him or melts him seems - at least to me—to be how his father is playing the guitar and singing.

Music - sounds that are familiar - that have elicited emotion from us - can so quickly bring us to a moment in time, reminding us of someone who has walked on.

I have many of these that remind me of my mother.

But, hearing a song - and there are only a few that make me think of my brother -

It stopped me dead in my tracks yesterday, as I was moving around my apartment, and doing chores.

I remembered Jeremie.

Stared and blinked at the screen.

And - and I know it sounds weird and woo woo, but I felt his aura.

I also met with sponsor yesterday, and we discussed Step 10.

Her mother has recently passed away.

When I asked how she is doing she explained to me that she has felt her - she then paused and looked at me and said that she couldn’t explain it to me any better than that.

I smiled and said she didn’t have to.

And she doesn’t -

I know what that feels like.

I have felt my mother.

I have felt my Grandma Donelson.

I have felt my father - especially in a very vivid dream.

Now, I have felt my brother.

I then added, to my sponsor, “I have felt my mother…it feels like her aura, her energy.”

She nodded and said, “The very best of them.”

And I nodded.

It’s a perfect description.

Their spirit, their aura, their energy, the color they would glow, beyond their body, and how you felt them and their love, in the best of times nad times of connection - when they weren’t shielded, or you were distant, or when there was a rift between you -

That feeling, of pure connection and love, who they were, at their essence, and how they made you feel -

That, THAT -

is the best description I can give of how you can feel someone who has walked on. To know that they are still someway with you, even if it is beyond the corporeal and temporal realm that we struggle to understand or to adequately describe.

I am comforted by the energy and spirit of my mother, because I loved her so much and was so close to her.

The presence of my father and brother hits differently, because of how they died - at their own hand.

But, though jarring, it is also comforting.

Yesterday, after I recovered my shock, I looked at my phone and the song playing and simply said —

“I hope you’re okay now, Jeremie.”

And I truly do.

But I think he is. '

In my heart, I know it.