Caffeinated Politics

I just concluded a long phone call with a friend who remains in California with her parents. Having traveled out for the holidays, she remains as the final closure of her mom’s eyes draws near. I always feel a need to lift the clouds, so I opened the call with “Is this Chinese takeout?” Laura burst into laughter.

But this hospice situation bites for all concerned. It was a few words I offered at the end of the conversation that landed me at my desk to process a bit in the way that works for me. Writing. As James might say, he knows the level of emotion I hold within by the volume of my keystrokes. I have Dottie Rambo singing in my headphones. So, let’s get this therapy session underway.

I have known this family since meeting James in 2000. Laura was one of his best friends and a fellow student in the dorm hall at Middlebury. When we landed in California in 2oo2 for a long vacation, Roy and Linda Madsen were the first faces we saw. They were looking for us as they knew the hotel we were to stay in had burned down the night before. Twenty years later, they were my guests on a Doty Land podcast, opening the episode with a song they sang. Roy, as a boy, was a ‘radio star’ and as a teenager attended numerous radio shows, including the Gene Autry and the Ozzie and Harriet shows. Talk about an interesting interview.

Roy is a flutist in his local orchestra, and this week he again attended a rehearsal session. Hearing the uplifting news, I offered a short story that bent its way to perhaps assisting a grieving husband.

I was learning to ‘play’ the piano at the same time my mom was in her final days. In the months that followed, I would be either practicing or fooling around when a certain chord not being sought would be fingered, and I would just break down on the bench. One lone solo chord.

I did not hunt for the chord. It found me.

I told Laura that I hoped that her dad would find that type of chord too. It is a powerfully touching and sad sound, but in a beautiful way, if that makes sense. Mom liked music, as does Linda. That connection to music that is central to Roy makes him strongly primed to find healing to a chord that can’t be purposely created.

The chord will find him.

We all know that grief can try to be all-consuming. I know the simplest tasks during such times can feel like having anemia. My language faltered at times, and James spoke for me. But the tonic for my soul, over and over, was music.

Music doesn’t ask anything of us. It doesn’t demand that we be strong or articulate. It simply arrives, sometimes quietly as a whisper, sometimes demanding to be as loud as the waves that crash when gales blow the lake into angry frothy madness. I can write sincerely that music allows us to know we are not alone. It reminds us that we are not alone in our sorrow. A single chord can feel like a hand on the shoulder. A familiar melody can feel like someone sitting beside us, saying nothing, but hugging us all the same.

There was a UW-Madison grad student who lived in our neighborhood, doing research at the hospital. He liked to have a cup of coffee here, and I appreciated his conversations. He spoke about how neuroscientists’ research shows how music activates memory, emotion, and sensory pathways all at once. For rank-and-file folks like you and me who have cried to a song, we know how music reaches places inside us that words cannot.

Healing through music isn’t about forgetting or moving on. It’s about creating a much-needed space to feel, to remember, and yes, even to breathe. It can remind us of who we’ve lost, but also of who we are becoming in the wake of that loss. That matters, too.

To Roy, in one of the hardest seasons of his life, I truly trust that music becomes a compass, guiding him back to his foundation, note by note, chord by chord.

The chord that hits the heart will find you. It always does. And when it does, it doesn’t just echo—it heals. On this, I am certain.