I Thank You, Mom: A Memoir

Tonight I decided to post a memoir I had to write for my English Composition class. After reading it over, I realized it did possess posting material. I hope you like it, and I hope my professor does, too!

Music connects powerfully with the memories we obtain in our minds. In an instant, we can feel pleasure from a cheery pop song, or its opposite form can occur from a death metal track. I can’t even remember a time when I didn't connect the past to a song I once heard. We all experience many different emotions, some positive and some negative, from listening to music we believe interprets the mood at that particular moment in time. It is, in fact, true that events from the past are physically frozen in time. But that doesn't mean we can’t revisit those moments in a mental state of mind.

It was a chilly January morning in Orlando, Florida. I walked across the school’s campus to third period Concert Choir. Exhausted from the rushed five-minute sprint through the first brutal winter wind of two-thousand and twelve, I entered my class, threw my thirty-pound backpack on the ground against the wall, quickly grabbed my choir binder through the sea of seventy students, and ran to the warm safety of my chair on the risers. The class immediately started with vocal warm-ups and vigorous breathing exercises. We needed to sound our best; after all we were one of the top choirs in school. And with being one of the few Juniors in a class of all Seniors I made sure that I worked exponentially harder than the rest. 

After the ten-minute warm-up, we dove right into our relatively new piece of music. We’ve been working on it for almost 2 weeks and we just about have more than half of the song perfected. My director allowed us to perform the song up until we needed to stop and learn the rest of the piece. The song was called, “I Thank You God For Most This Amazing Day” composed by Eric Whitacre. He arranged the music from the literature works of E. E. Cummings. In a month from now, my choir will have performed this for a Musical Performance Assessment (MPA) for the District of Orange County.

It was normal for our choir to learn the notes and chords of a song prior to adding in the lyrics that followed. The third verse was next on our list. Someone volunteered to read the poetic wording: “How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing, breathing, breathing any- lifted from the no of all nothing- human merely being doubt, unimaginable you?” (Cummings) All of a sudden, I felt a strange sense overpower my body. I ignored it and stayed focused on the music at hand. We sat up in our seats, held our music binders up so we were able to see it and the director, and began to sing. After the first run-through, I felt a dizzy sensation. The room started to spin. Was I sick? No, I couldn’t be. I felt my head and no fever came about. Perhaps it was because I skipped breakfast. But I did that every morning. 

The second time we sang the verse, my body responded worse than the first. A cloud of depression hovered over me. My chest felt like my rib cage was closing in on my internal organs. I couldn't see as there were tears forming in my eyes and my throat was closing up. Why was I getting this upset? Thankfully I sat in the back where I was less likely to draw attention to myself. 

After the third time around, I thought I was going to throw up. I looked carefully and analyzed the lyrics once more. I guess the third time really is the charm, because I finally understood what was going on. My body was reacting to what my heart was telling my mind. A friend in my voice section looked over at me with deep concern. She mouthed, “What’s wrong?” I glanced back at her and after a brief moment, I mouthed back only one word, “Mom”.

This particular verse reminded me of the very last time I was able to talk to my mom. On December twenty-fifth, two-thousand and eleven at approximately nine-forty in the morning, I said my final farewell to my mother. I was in the Florida Hospital Cancer Treatment Center. This was my last moment to say what I needed to say. Referring back to the third verse of the song, I will explain each sense. How should tasting: I could taste my salty tears streaming down my face. I was unable to swallow because my throat closed up from being too upset. How should touching: The feel of her weak, bloated hand as I held on for dear life. How should hearing: The room was echoing back the loudness of the machines desperately keeping her alive. How should seeing: My mom was pale and weak from the disease killing her from the inside. Her eyes and lips bloody from the dried out skin. Her body was covered in IVs and wires hooked up to said machines, and a breathing tube was lodged down her throat. How should breathing: This word occurs three times, one after the other, symbolizing the timing of the breathing tube inhaling and exhaling. And finally, lifted from the no of all nothing: I told my mom that it was okay to let go of her physical body and to allow her spirit to ascend into Heaven. 

After choir class, I had to run out crying so then no one could see me. I never expected one part of a song to have such a large impact on my emotions. Continuing to learn the song was a struggle. At the MPA concert, I cried the entire time we sang because I felt she was there with me, as I stayed with her at that moment in time. The day after, I told my director about my experience with the song. He hugged me and understood saying, “I was afraid to bring this song onto you. I knew it was going to touch you in some way.”

The textual meaning of the piece is to thank God for everything he naturally gave us on this beautiful earth. But as I mentioned before, our minds and hearts will interpret songs and poetry differently from one another. My heart took this song in a more personal route, rather than in a religious one. And oddly, I’m okay with every part of that.

A-plus material?

Allison