That Song

It’s the last day and night of June, little sweetheart. Today has been the hottest day of the year, so far. 97f at its peak here in the late afternoon.

Tonight, I don’t know why, I thought of looking up something on YouTube. It was something that had been on TV and rather a phenomenon at the time, so much so that my mom had sent me a link to watch it. It was that clip of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. I remember it being a little extraordinary as it was one of those awful TV talent shows and as she was older and didn’t look like a model or something that everyone was rather mean and dismissive when she came out and then shocked, and hopefully ashamed of themselves, to hear how wonderfully she sang.

I remember telling you about it and although you agreed with all that you were less excited because, as you told me, you had “a relationship with that song”, yourself. I didn’t quite know what you meant, little sweetheart, but I thought I understood.

When I finally did hear you sing it, it was from a performance that had been filmed when you were only 12 years old. They played it at your memorial on a huge screen at the back of the stage. You were still a little girl but all of you, all I would come to know, was there in your eyes as you sang expressively, soaringly and beautifully.

Your memorial, of course, was held, incredibly, on my own birthday. A day we’d meant to spend rehearsing a play of mine in New York, then driving to Philadelphia that night to see Low play at the storied indie venue at The First Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street. Instead I was here at the Brava Theatre in The Mission in San Francisco about to give your eulogy.

As in all things, little sweetheart, I followed you. After they showed you singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, the tears still rolling down my cheeks, I got up with the words I’d written for you and stood at the podium in silence for a long moment before I could finally gather myself enough to begin.

When I hear that song now, I, too, have a relationship with it, little sweetheart. One that you gave me, like so many other things that I treasure, that saved and redeem me.

How I love you! Forever, my angel. Forever.