On My Mother's Birthday

Written February 6, 2016

Today is my Mom’s birthday. 

Whether it was by random chance or a nudge from my subconscious, the night before last I put on an album I hadn’t listened to for a long while - Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”. It’s a concept album about the trajectory of love, from breathless infatuation, to romance, to heartbreak and loss, finally resolving with the most exquisite and wise rendering imaginable of the title track. 

That album had just been released the year my mother died, and I remember listening to it over and over again while I was grieving her loss. She would have loved that album, which consists mostly of standards from the 1930s and 40s, all with glorious big band arrangements.

And while I love the standards too (I always thought I was born in the wrong decade) it’s the two Joni original compositions (A Case of You and Both Sides Now) that helped me process my grief the most. If you’ve only heard Judy Collins’ version of BSN, you’ve heard nothing. And thank goodness Joni waited until she’d lived a long time before she recorded it. There is so much hard-earned wisdom in that voice.

Listening again this week brought me back to that time when my loss and my grief was so deep. And while the longing to see my mom’s face again is always present, time has done what it always blessedly does – added a touch of sweetness to soften the bitter.

“I remember that time you told me, you said ‘love is touching souls’. Surely you touched mine, cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.”
-- A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)

Love you Mom.