Dust In The Wind

The music of my year, was also the music of my life. Music to me was more than a form of art, it was a living breathing person. I lost a few people this year, and one of them was my uncle Mark. And as far as music goes, my uncle Mark was music to me. He inspired my love for music since as far back as I can recall. As a small child I didn’t listen to kid songs or anything like that, I listened to what he told me to listen to. He inspired music into the whole family really. He sang like a country music angel and I always wished he had tried to make a career out of it. Now I know that it was a wonderful blessing from God to gift our family with his voice. It wasn’t for nothing, it was for us and that somehow makes it all the more special. He passed and the first thing I thought of was the song “American Pie” because that was truly the day music died for me. It will never be the same, no song will ever feel the same or sound the same to me because he’s gone. And I don’t mean that it’s ruined for me, it’s just slightly different somehow. Maybe I will get over this part of it eventually, but all music makes me think of him. And I am grateful for that.

The day he passed, I started hearing a song in my head that I hadn’t heard in years. It’s a country song called “how can I help you say goodbye”. He picked it, I know he did. There was no other reason to have that song stuck in my head. That’s what he always did, he always picked the exact right song for the exact right occasion and would make sure people were listening. He knew the power of music and would always use it to help people who were hurting. Then later that day, a strange thing happened. I went to the store and the radio was playing and a song came on that most people would think I’m crazy or even mean for thinking it was a message from him. But it was, this was his sense of humor and I believe that as a joke, to make me laugh, to make me remember him the way he really was. What he would actually say to me in the moment was a song called, “he aint worth missing”. Of course he is way beyond worth missing but that was just the kind of thing he would say about himself in that moment. He wanted me to know he was still there still watching over us. And he loved to make people laugh more than almost anything else besides music. Later that same week my mom and I were sitting on the porch, my mom was his sister. And out of the blue she starts singing “how can I help you say goodbye”. I stared at her wide-eyed and asked, “why are you singing that?” and she said, “I don’t know it just came to my mind”. That was my answer and validation. It was real, he really was sending us messages through songs. He had sent several other signs as well but this is about songs and the songs just validated the other messages we all were getting.

The entire family but mostly his daughter, son, my sister and I were very insistent on finding any recordings of my uncle singing. For reasons I won’t go into, all the CDs he had recorded in the more recent years were not available to us. So as we all combed through every old item of his we could find to remember him by, it became almost hopeless. The places we were looking would have destroyed anything like a CD or cassette tape most likely. It felt so hopeless. But we didn’t give up, his son went to my grandma’s attic to look for things up there. He found five cassette tapes. I was the only one of us that owns a cassette player. So he and I started listening to the tapes one by one and writing down what songs were on them. They were songs my uncle loved and had recorded to listen to, but none were of him singing. And then one tape, I put in and played all the way through even though it didn’t even seem like it had belonged to my uncle. There were songs on it that no one in my family would have listened to. I thought that maybe it was just junk someone found at a yard sale and as it ended I contemplated just tossing it out. But then my cousin, my uncle’s son asked if I’d listened to the other side. I had a little but not from the beginning. It was meant to be, because I flipped it over and it started playing on the other side.

We heard a voice and it took a moment because neither of us at that point were really expecting to ever find it. My uncle’s voice, through the speakers. His son got emotional and had to stop the tape for a while and go be alone. I also was emotional but not too far to listen to the rest. I had to know how much there was on the tape. He sang “name” by the goo goo dolls. And then as if by some twist of fate he sang “Dust in the Wind”. It was almost directly a message straight from heaven if I ever saw one. He was telling us that nothing lasts forever. That even though his time on this earth was cut short, that it was okay because all of this, even us will be dust and that it’s alright. That it was all worth it and he missed nothing and that we will all be together again someday. Reminding us to take nothing for granted in the here and now because we will one day all be dust in the wind. He was saying you can miss me, but don’t be sad because I lived all my life through, now it’s your turn please don’t waste it because I didn’t waste mine. And he didn’t, he didn’t become a famous singer, but he would have hated that life. His legacy is much grander than that, much deeper. A million people could have been his fans and would have, but like most things that are precious. his voice was a treasure only meant for the most important of people to him. And he would never have wanted it any other way.