153. Three songs and death.

Music and death, a beautiful dance.

Growing up, I used to listen to music every day as much as I could, especially through my earphones. My dad has always played music at home and in the car. He tells the story of sitting me in front of the TV in my car seat, with music playing on MTV, all the time. I used to go crazy listening to "Steal My Sunshine" by Len, apparently.

When I left home and no longer had the adolescent desire to block out the rest of the world, I stopped listening to as much music. Throughout high school, I used to sleep with my JVC Gumy Sport Earbuds in all night while my iPod played album after album. Dad used to say I was going to strangle myself in my sleep, which obviously never happened. I used to do everything with music plugged into my ears, but nowadays, I no longer feel drawn to it. I rarely listen to music, and when I do, I listen to a specific song or two, and that’s it.

Looking back, it’s a big difference because music used to help me feel things, and nowadays music pulls me away from my feelings. In some circumstances, I use music to help drift into a certain mood, like when I’m feeling down or upset, I’ll play something upbeat or happy to get me dancing or singing. But I usually love being in silence, and music feels like it pulls me out of my bubble.

Maybe it’s common for teenagers to go about their days with earphones in because it helps them feel things. We can more or less control our inner world through music. We can hype ourselves up or make ourselves feel even sadder, depending on which album we choose to listen to. I used to switch between Example and The Script; those were my two moods all throughout high school. I’d also resort to Mayday Parade for extremely sad moments. I remember falling asleep listening to one of their albums in the bath. I woke up with my iPod nano fully submerged and the music still playing—God must have decided that I didn’t need more teenage depression and let my iPod live that day.

Because I don’t listen to as much music as I used to, whenever a song hits me hard, I save it and try not to listen to it too much, afraid that it will lose its effect if I overdo it. There have been two songs this week that really made me feel something.

The first one is "Stand By Me (Acoustic)" by Liam Gallagher, which is completely random because I’ve never listened to Oasis and I actually had to Google if he was in the band. This song popped up on someone’s Instagram story, and I saved it because the few seconds I heard made me feel something really deep and weird. I forgot about it for a couple of days until C and I were driving through the countryside and I decided to hit play. I read the lyrics as we listened to it, surrounded by big green trees and vast fields of planted corn, and life felt like a film. There’s something about it that transports me into this celestial, floating, higher-self feeling that makes me feel like life is a movie and that it’s perfect, beautiful, and blissful. I never thought I’d use any of those adjectives thanks to listening to the founder of Oasis, but never say never.

The second song is "Cielo Azul" by Sen Senra, and this one feels like life is fragile and slipping through my fingers. It makes me think of blue skies, flying birds, floating clouds, my friends laughing, dancing with C in slow motion, and driving through the countryside holding C’s hand in my lap. I can see fragments of my life in slow motion, and it makes me feel rooted in the present. It makes me feel like life is floating away from me and that it will all be gone in the blink of an eye, and that makes me want to put my phone away and open my eyes wider to take it all in.

Death has been on my mind lately because of things that have happened around me, and so I’ve been reflecting on my own death. This has meant me asking C what he’s going to do with my teddy bear and all my books when I die, and then me giving him instructions.

I remember my Nona crying in the back of Mum’s blue Ford Fiesta, telling me that she’d dreamt she was on her family’s farm in Italy. She said that her parents and all her brothers and sisters were there, and that she felt so happy she didn’t want to wake up. She told me that she believed they were all waiting for her and that they told her that they were okay, for her not to worry. When I first heard this in the car at around ten years old, I used to cry because she was crying. I can still see her sitting to my right with her small leather crossbody bag, her glasses, and her fingers and wrists full of gold jewelry brought back from Italy. I can also remember a sudden reality hitting me, but at that time I couldn’t understand what it meant but I did understand that life would go on whether I was alive or not, and that felt scary.

I used to fear death and I used to fear my Nona leaving forever, but when I’d imagine her on the farm she grew up on with all of the family I never got to meet, I felt peace. In fact, whenever I think about myself dying now, I feel peace. I don’t fear it anymore, and I have some sort of faith that death isn’t an eternal silence but something else a human is too blind to see. Everyone can believe what they want. We all choose to put our faith into what brings us more peace, and that’s for each person to decide.

What doesn’t bring me peace is one of my loved ones dying. I say this while sitting on the fence because I’ve had to say goodbye to someone I loved deeply, and watching her cross over was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve been given the gift to witness. But at the same time, when the day comes for me to lose C, I can only imagine heartbreak and a heavy feeling in my chest that feels as real as an open wound. Floating away without your physical body must be a celestial experience, but the people left trapped in their human carcass are the ones left to feel the pain.

There’s one thing about death that makes me question my entire existence and feels the most real, and that thing is walking through mine and C’s home, looking at all of his abandoned belongings. His notebooks and pencils scattered around the house will never be used by him again. His beloved carbon kitchen knife becoming an unused blade. His work clothes, full of oil stains and holes from welding, never again taking part in one of his creative projects. His workshop full of pieces of wood and tools I’ll never know how to use or be able to transform into the beautiful objects he creates. His side of the bed would forever be empty, and if someone else were to take his place, they’d never be him. There would always be some kind of something missing. I imagine it as a hole in my soul that could heal and recover over time, but it would never be whole again.

When our loved ones die, pass away, or cross over, we suffer because we’re left behind with holes filling our lives. We’re the ones supposed to carry on as normal while someone who meant so much to us has left this plane. You’re given a few days off work and asked to fill out important paperwork while something we have never been able to comprehend has pointed a mirror at us, reminding us that we too are mortal beings.

Here’s another song that makes me think about time.