It was thirty years ago today–July 1, 1986–when I woke up to the doorbell ringing.
7:30ish in the morning, as I recall, on a Tuesday. I was annoyed as hell. I’m a night person, always have been, and no one should be bugging me at that hour. I was 19, six weeks to go until I hit 20. I’d stayed at home that summer, making the astonishingly bad decision to accept my friend’s request to be music director of what was the second worst show I’d ever been involved with.
(And not just because it was the worst summer I had, but seriously, “They’re Playing Our Song” is just an awful show. Still, “The Good Doctor” wins out for a truly execrable lack of anything to recommend it. Interestingly, I only just now realized that they’re both Neil Simon. And I like the guy!)
But anyway, the badness of the decision had nothing to do with the quality of the show. What I should have been doing was traveling with the rest of my family–my sisters, father and mother–to the Bahamas. Their destination was an experimental cancer treatment clinic, in what I was too blinkered and naïve to realize was a last-ditch effort to save my mother’s life. Continue reading “Grief marks an anniversary: One door opens, another shuts” »
Curious, I clicked on the person who’d originally shared this candle image, and I saw a couple of others who’d done the same thing. All of them had one thing in common: Albany Pro Musica, a choral group founded by Dr. Griggs-Janower. Another thing they had in common: no one was saying a bloody thing along with the candle—just the photo. In retrospect I realize this was probably to preserve the family’s privacy and perhaps also because words may have just felt wrong, somehow. But it made it damn frustrating for someone on the periphery to know what was going on.