Growing up, these songs were always my parents’ songs.
I used to sing this first one to Sean when we still lived with my parents when I was too tired from studying to read bedtime story. He recently asked my Mom if she used to sing this song to him because he remembers it being sung to him when he was little. She told him that I was the one who used to do that.
I also remember one time, just after my Dad finished dialysis, my brother, Jimmy, played this song on his guitar as my Dad laid in bed extremely exhausted and my Mom laid behind him and held him. Jimmy told me to sing this song because of course I knew all of the words! It’s THEIR song!
This next one it is also THEIR song.
Whenever I hear either of these two songs, two things are evident:
! 1. I have to listen to the ENTIRE song. 2. I will cry.
These songs have always been there songs since before I was born. The songs my dad would always sing to my mom were these:
He would sing this song to her just after she had an appointment to get her hair colored. It wasn’t until a couple years ago, after he had been gone for a decade that I realized that this man was going to shoot Ruby!
My parents and I watched a live concert of Lou Rawls singing this song and my Dad told my Mom that this was going to be herwhen he is gone.
The first two songs I posted are and have always been my parents’ songs. The second two, I just remember my Dad joking with my Mom and my Mom would shake her head and move her hand like she was dismissing what he said.
So, all FOUR of the songs will make me cry because they just DID! Now, my Dad has been gone for coming up on 13 years this August and I never thought that I would learn anything new about him that I hadn’t already known or heard about. But then my Mom shows up this morning softly singing a song.
We both were in my kitchen before she started making breakfast. She played this video on her phone that I was not prepared to witness! It completely floored me!
She told me that my Dad used to sing this song to her. I couldn’t believe it! My eyes began to well with tears as I watched the look in my Mom‘s eyes that told me that she was not here in the now but in the past as her eyes also started to well with tears. I was completely floored! We discovered during breakfast that this song was released in 1977. Of course I didn’t know that my Dad used to sing this to her because I wasn’t born until 1982.
My Mom texted my brother, Steve, to ask if he remembered my Dad singing this song to her. He did and I still couldn’t believe it! I pulled this song up on Apple Music so we could listen to it continuously as we completed our routine. I listened to the words over and over again and I told her that it was a really sweet song! I can’t imagine my Dad singing it to her!
It was so tender! It made me think of the tender moments I remember from the end of my Dad’s life. I thought of those sweet memories I witnessed of their love until the end. I have to write about that another day because I’m still crying over all FIVE of these songs!