Music is Life

(The following story contains thoughts about dying and dealing with death. Some readers may find the topic difficult.)



I am in the hospital again, hopefully for the last time. Each stay gets a little longer and leaves me more spent. I barely have the energy to breathe. People often say they are bone-tired. These people have no idea. I had no idea. Who could imagine a fatigue so complete that seeing, hearing, and breathing would require one to conserve energy to attempt the effort. 

The drugs have allowed me to add more days to my life. Other drugs have allowed me to make it through those days, although I couldn’t always distinguish day from night or one day from the next. The miracle of medicine makes me sick sometimes. 

I have lost the desire to live. Actually, I haven’t been living for a couple of months now. So I really haven’t lost the desire to live, I have lost the desire to continue. I don’t talk about it much. My friends and family get very uneasy if I say I just don’t want to go on.  They try to encourage me, tell me to hang in there. I have been hanging in here too long. It is time to cut the rope. Why they don’t see that ceasing to exist would be a comfort for me, I do not know.

The little bit of energy I have left, I use for them. I try to make them more comfortable. I have the benefit of narcotics; they have the benefit of mobility. We do connect with music. I love music and my friends and family continue to shower me various CDs and players and radios. 

As I became sicker and more weak, these musical gifts became smaller and easier to use. The CDs and portable player with headphones became a smart phone with music apps became an MP3 player with an external speaker. 

Just as a death-row inmate is provided a final meal, dying people are often offered a final wish. Those who are left need to feel as though they have provided some additional comfort to the one dying. I wish they could understand just seeing people living life is beautiful to me. But they want to do something more. We usually love people with food. But I no longer eat; my appetite and ability to swallow have long been gone. There are IV’s and feeding tubes now. Besides, eating is over-rated, time consuming, and wearisome. But music and I are still soul mates. My friends and family decided my final wish, as it were, would come from them with a little help from Musicians on Call.

Musicians on Call arranged to have JCM play for me. The room is sort of on the dark side, as I don’t like it very bright. He comes in with just his guitar. No entourage, no equipment, no security. It’s just JCM and an acoustic guitar. He sits in one of those crappy chairs they always put in hospital rooms. You know the kind with wooden arms and padding about the thickness of an eggshell. I suppose it is the hospitals way to discourage long visits and reduce costs. JCM is wearing his obligatory baggy khakis and t-shirt. He is not, thank God, wearing that hat. I can see those wonderful curls spilling down his forehead and falling in his eyes. He nods, as do I. He begins to play. I close my eyes. The music finds its way into my head and my soul, just like it did all those years ago when I was vibrant and young. For a moment I think I must be dead. This is heaven, right? 

He continues to play to me. I open my eyes just to look at him, to drink him all in. His eyes are closed and his face contorted. He, too, is in heaven. His nimble, long fingers are wandering up and down the neck of his guitar while his pluck of the strings creates the soothing sound. He is leaned forward in that pathetic little chair, cradling the guitar like it is his only lifeline. I imagine he is thinking and listening to the music he is making, marveling at it. He is not in the chair, not in the hospital, not on this earth. I imagine he is on a completely different plane of existence. He and his guitar melded as one entity. I rest my eyes again. I get tired just seeing. I let my mind see for me.

He has no idea what this time means to me. I do not think he understands the power he possesses, what a positive influence he imparts. As I lie dying in my hospital bed soaking in this wonderful musical bath, I realize I have so many regrets. I really must remove some of these regrets before I go, somehow. A tear finds its way down the side of my cheek. JCM has finished his song. I do not know for how long. It is so quiet. 

I open my eyes to see JCM looking through me. He has a far way look in eyes. Perhaps it is reminiscent of his hospital stay, perhaps he just searching for some words he thinks will make me feel or feel better. I slowly turn on my side so I can see him more directly. My movement brings him back into the room. I finally manage to speak to him, “I wish I could have met you when I was alive.” Speaking even those few words is so tiring. I suppose I would be sad, but I just don’t have the energy for that. At least that is one regret I will no longer harbor. I have spoken my heart to my musical friend. He will not understand what I mean, but that is OK. He will go away with something of me. I have gone away with a part of him.

Heaven isn’t lights, milk and honey, and streets paved with gold. Heaven is music that ebbs and flows through your veins and through your mind. For some, it is music flowing from their minds and souls through their hands, their eyes, and their voices. Now that I am gone I understand. It is the musicians who are the angels; spreading the word through pen, play, and passion. As I am now nothing but energy, which is funny given then when ‘alive’ it was energy that I did not have, I see how music connects everyone and everything. All of earth is connected to and by music. Sounds created by birds and streams and thunder and rain provide inspiration. Pain and hurt and love and fun provide the lyrics for our lives. The plants and animals provide the basis to create objects to play this music on. Everything is connected by music. Music is life.