One year later



My sister Harriet, passed away in May 2017.  A few months later we had a memorial for her in Brandon Vermont, a town our grandparents retired to and had a small farm where we all spent our summers.  My brother Bill called me before the event to let me know he wrote a song in her memory and would I accompany him on a guitar.  The words were to the music of Wildwood Rose.  I said sure, even though I had not played my guitar in years.  In fact, I didn't even have my guitar with me.  Michelle and I are living part of the year in Rhode Island, 3000 miles from our other home in Watsonville CA where my guitar was safely resting in a closet, untouched and unplayed for many many years.


My brother-in-law, Cameron had a couple of guitars lying around his place, so I asked if I could borrow one to practice some before Harriet's memorial.  After a couple of weeks of reacquainting my fingers to steel strings, I felt confident I could play well enough to back up my brother's banjo lead.  The day of the memorial, a lovely beautiful Vermont summer day, by the way, my brother, his son and I ran through the song a couple of times before singing in front of the assembled guests.  My fingers felt like lead.

Bill's words were moving, bittersweet, remembrance of Harriet's life, and when set to music-evoked emotion to a far greater degree then spoken words can ever do.  Two young women, friends of Harriet's daughters had just returned from a bluegrass festival and added another guitar and violin to the mix.  It was a special moment for a very special day for friends and family alike.

I didn't pick up a guitar again for another year. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Musical Family

Image
11-year-old trumpet player You had to be in the third grade to join the school band in the Plainfield NJ school system.  I decided to take up the trumpet, not because I really wanted to, but because my big brother, Bill, played the trumpet and I wanted to be like him.  He was six years older than me.  My parents weren't sure that was the best instrument for me, something about my lips not fitting the mouthpiece, but since that was what I wanted to do, they let me. Music was a big part of our growing up, but our parents weren't obsessive about it, encouraging, but not insistent that we learn an instrument or become musicians.  Before my dad got married he was in a band called the Merrymen.  But he had to stop playing when he lost all his teeth, neglect I believe, you can't play the trombone professionally with a set of false teeth. He would play once in a while when friends and family came over, but by the time I got to high school, he quit ...
Read more

Gertrude Emma Frisch

Image
My maternal grandmother, Gertrude Emma Frisch.  I hardly knew her, she died of a stroke when I was four years old.  She was making a cake for my brother's birthday and fell over in our kitchen. My brother and sister and I were in the room over the kitchen and heard her fall.  The floor had a crack in it and we looked through that and could see her lying on the floor. She came to live with us for her last year of life.  We made a small half bath in the "backroom", a large porch on the back of our house in Plainfield NJ.  My mother didn't talk too much about her or maybe she did to my brother and sister, or I was just too young to know what they were talking about.  I do know she was from England, married an Austrian who was a commercial artist who had a studio in New York. I don't know how they met, or where, but they were both "artists.  He the painter, she the pianist. The only time I remember her playing the piano was when she came to live wit...
Read more