Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

I wrote you a song. Well, truthfully, I wrote you a song a while ago. As a matter of fact, it is the song I referred to back during that first year of letters. The one I wrote as I was learning to play my guitar. Four years ago. Wow, I’ve been playing guitar for four years… I can’t say I’m quite proficient yet, but I’ve become pretty good with at least the eight chords I started with. Anyway, I re-recorded the song I wrote a while back. I think it’s my best recording yet — as good a recording as one can get with just a guitar, an iPhone mic, and a living room.

I wanted to tell you about how I wrote it. For most of my songs, I’d start with a chord progression and then add lyrics and then polish up the melody and flow. But for yours, I started with the lyrics. An outpouring of how I felt as the year anniversary of your Homegoing approached. Just words in a notebook. The only music I could add at the time was the most basic of chord progressions. Yet, it is the musical simplicity that allowed me to focus on the lyrics. On being real and honest. On testifying that grief hurts, but God — God is my Mainstay. Without Him I’m nothing in this journey. He gives us permission to grieve because He grieves with us.

And there’s a reprise coming. I wrote this to commemorate the first year without you, and now I have a new verse and chorus to reflect the past four years since. But I’ll share it on that five-year mark. I’ll tell you what, though — it is quite the feat to put four years of life without you into one four-lined verse and a reprised chorus. But, I did it.

It’s the first day of April 2021. Five years ago today, I had no idea what the next month would bring. This is a difficult month. You remember the feeling of stepping into the first day of your birthday month? That excitement of ownership — like, this is my month! Yeah, well, what I feel now is the opposite. As though I wish this month could simply be erased from the calendar. Okay, so maybe that’s a little dramatic. I don’t feel that way at every moment. However, I’ve felt that sentiment more often in the past four years than I used to care to admit. I’ll admit it now, though. Because I’m trying to be more honest, and that’s often how I feel.

I’m going to write to you more this month. I have more to say than I’ve had in a while. But, in the meantime, I’ve enclosed the recording of my song. I wish you were here in person so I could share this new love and skill for songwriting with you. Although, if you were here, I wouldn’t have written this song in the first place (and I think it’s one of my best).

I love you and miss you lots, Mom.

Your daughter,
Hannah

(P.S. Aside from a one-time performance of this song at the BCM my freshman year, I have not shared it with anyone apart from close friends and family. The idea of it being out there is more than a little unnerving, but it’s time that I started to share the other outlet of expression that God has been using in the past five years of processing. It’s like you wrote in that letter to me my senior year: “Don’t hide your light under a bushel. You have many talents, use them for Him!” So, here we go.)