Unforgettable

As I woke up this morning, I had one of my songs in my head. That doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it’s usually accompanied by memories of singing that song for an audience somewhere in my distant past. Maybe I forgot the lyrics that night, or maybe I remember feeling like I finally nailed it. It all comes back to me in a sort of dreamy sequence. This morning, it was Grace.

I’ve sung Grace at weddings, funerals, dinner parties, and concert halls. I sang it in the pit at Ground Zero soon after recovery workers had finished their work at The World Trade Center. I’ve sung it at St John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan with 3000 people listening, an organist playing a steady drone for me to harmonize with – no amplification. Just me singing in the center of that massive church.

But the memory that pulled me awake this morning was a concert at the Colony Café in Woodstock, New York where I lived it at the time. It must have been 2001. My son Forrest was six or eight months into chemotherapy at the time. It felt like the whole town had shown up to support me, Peter, and Forrest. Forrest was not quite three and still nursing. His treatments were hard on him, so when he needed me, he needed me right away. I had started singing Grace. I could see Peter with Forrest on his hip, walking along the back wall in the darkness. Midway through the song I heard Forrest fussing, his way of letting us know he needed me. I kept singing as Peter brought him to me. Someone in the first row gave up their seats so Peter and I could sit. He held my mic as I kept singing and Forrest nursed.

Just writing this makes me cry. Not because it’s sad so much as it’s intense. My need to mother Forrest far outweighed whatever protocols a singer might usually follow; intense because I wonder now what it felt like for the audience.

What I remember most is the silence that followed. It lasted so long. What I remember is a kind of radical reality. Everyone knew the story and the odds. Together we felt it all.

Love,
Bar

This version of “Grace” is a live recording at the Colony Cafe during a concert I did four months after Forrest died. The drone is the town of Woodstock holding me up.

Thank the world for giving me all the reasons that I have to sing. Amen.