Today is the Last Song of the Rest of Your Life

Hola, amigos!

I haven't written much lately because there hasn't been too much to add... now that we're in the waiting period for the MRI I am just living day to day and working at getting better at communicating.

We talk almost exclusively using sign or fingerspelling at home now, and don't think that I don't know how challenging it is for Husband... it's one thing to take a language class with your spouse, it's entirely another when your 'homework assignment' is to try to use it exclusively for the rest of your life. But he stubbornly tries and tries, reaching for the notebook only as a last resort after multiple attempts show that I am going down an altogether wrong path with the concept he is trying to communicate. I tell him how much I appreciate this and how much it means to me that we are having two-way conversations again - it feels a lot like breathing again after you've stayed underwater too long - but I am not sure he really understands how much I appreciate the effort and that I realize how almost unbearably frustrating it must be for him at times.

I was out with friends the other night and a blues band was playing (yeah, well, life sucks). It was outside so I was getting no "speaker vibe" or anything like that. At one point I asked them what they were listening to, 'cause I was listening to Paul Simon's "The Rhythm of the Saints". I hear music quite a lot and often play through whole old favourites in my head. (Those who know me know what a large influence listening to music had on my life - I was frequently to be seen wearing a walkman, then a discman, never drove without music, and often spent whole evenings just listening to CDs). Then I mentioned that the last song I had heard before I went deaf was Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" - it happened to be on the car radio as I drove back from that conference in Moncton that fateful weekend.

It's a nice enough song, but like so many other things about this experience, I didn't get a choice about it.

But it got me to thinking and I asked my companions if they could hear only one last song, then never hear music again, what would that last song be?

The answers were interesting. Husband picked "Gimme Shelter". R. picked "Sympathy for the Devil" (two votes for the Stones), and C. picked John Lennon's gut-wrenchingly beautiful emotional cry "Don't Let Me Down".

All good choices, I'd say. As for me, I keep coming back to "A Day in the Life", but the fact is that, even though I asked the question and my friends gamely played along, now that I know what it means to have music excised from your life completely, it's a choice I just can't bring myself to make.

more soon,

ronnie