Soundtrack

There was always music playing
At my dad’s home.
On the boat.
While on our road trips.
A soundtrack
While we were together.
This is what we did.
We spent our time together.

My dad is gone now,
But his soundtrack lives on.
Each song transporting us back
To a time,
To a place.

When he took his last breath,
We were all there.
It was as though the show was over.
The story.
The lights had come up.
The theater was empty.
Just dust on the floor.

Stupid death.
It’s what we would say,
When the bouts of tears would come.

For years these songs held special meaning.
I didn’t pay much attention, though.
It’s hard to explain.
We were still in it, see?
The show, that is.
While gripped in theater, it’s hard to see, sometimes.
It’s hard to know your seeing something… so special.
It’s hard to see, when you’re seeing.
Hind sight, what a thing.
But a good show, we come back to those.
We reminisce, we remember.
The smell, the song, the moment…

I’m not entirely sure when we played the first song.
Likely the night he died.
It would have been about one or two in the morning.
A perfectly warm, summer night in Florida,
Under the shade of darkness.
I searched for a song and pushed play.
We all looked up,
Agasp…

These melodies,
They enveloped us.
The response was instantaneous.
A sweet high,
A connection,
To a time.
To a place.
A place and time that only we knew.
Our family.

My sister had said something that hit me hard,
As we stood by his side ushering him toward the abyss…
“Look at us.”
“Look who is standing here.”
“None of us are of him, yet he loved us all the same.”
The adopted daughter.
The step son.
The bastard.
Family isn’t blood.
Family is soul.

What a surreal thing.
We cried for days listening to those songs.
I’ve never cried so much in my life.
Tears of absolute euphoria.
Tears of jubilant joy.
Tears,
Beckoning bliss…

Stupid death.