Cleaning Up

This morning I sat at the computer first, so I had to put my glasses on.  When I walked into the kitchen to fix breakfast I still had the glasses on and I could see just how dirty the stovetop was --- OMG!!!!!
The world looks so much better fuzzy!
Seeing the dirty stove reminded me of my mom.  We (I) finally pushed her to have her cataracts removed when she cleaned her solid glass stove top so hard she took the burner markings off.   She thought she was cleaning up a spill that had covered the markings. Mom was shocked when she finally had the cataracts removed. She had no idea how blind she had been.  She told me she hadn't realized that her sofa had a pattern in it; she thought it was just blocks of color.
I lost my mother this time last year --- August 20th, 2010 --- to be exact.  I miss her.  She had a completely unique way of looking at the world; we teased about "the world according to Margaret."  But it's true, and as I look back I realize that she taught me to "think out of the box."
Her passing really hit me hard. It had happened so fast and was completely unexpected --- and just  9 months after I lost my youngest brother to a heart attack which also happened so fast and was completely unexpected.  Last year was a long story and I don't want to dwell on it; I am grateful to my family -- to my husband --- we all learned just how strong we can be together.
After my mother's passing, I was a wreck, very emotional, the world was very fuzzy, filled with too much clutter, emotions spilling over everything.
But Thank God for Leah.  She knew what was going on for me --- she had just lost her dad two years before.
She said, "Betsy, I need you to write me some music."
So I wrote.  I write best when I have a deadline and I had a deadline; Leah was coming to Adrian for a concert in February and I had to have the music ready for her.
I said to her, "it's going to be sad," and she said, "The sadder, the better."
So I wrote about my mom.
At first, the emotion was so raw that I couldn't get through any of the notes without sobbing.  It's a good thing that most of the writing was me alone in the house with the cats.
But as I wrote, the composition took hold and began to have it's own life, as compositions do, and I found myself putting those emotions into beautiful patterns.  I began to hear my mother's voice, not just my memories of what she "would" say, but what she DID say to me after losing her son, about what her world had come to.  Now writing this to you --- I do NOT want you to think that my mom purposefully died.  That's not the case.  What we found out is that my mom had had a brain aneurysm for probably 30 years and had literally put the daily headache out of her mind everyday.  Actually the headaches had subsided when she had her cataracts removed, so for the last couple of years she had been feeling better. But it was just her time.  She couldn't stop the aneurysm anymore, and it took her.
Anyway, so I created the music; the piece; and the piece took all of that raw, fuzzy hot emotion and put it into patterns and swirls, beautiful notes.
And now I can play the music and think of my mother and not sob uncontrollably.
In fact, the "piece" is now part of a larger piece still in my head --- another musical to be written once "Obsession" has premiered.  The new piece is called "Semi-Private" and takes place in a hospital room.  But it's about family and loss and discovery -- but more about that later.

Nonetheless, I guess you can say I cleaned up. I put those emotions in a beautiful box and tied it with a bow --- a gift --- something to pull out and share with others.  My mother was a gift.
That's what music does for me.