It’s Taco Tuesday, well not really. Our household doesn’t have a set schedule as to the eating of tacos. I just happened to be making tacos and it happened to be a Tuesday; the night I made my proclamation to my family over dinner.
“Ok people listen up and feel free to take notes. When I kick the bucket, I want the thirty minutes of the meet and greet portion of whatever memorial, as yet to be determined, to be accompanied musically by Vaughn William’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.”
“This is kind of random, Mom,” says my son in between crunchy bites.
And from my husband, ever the quick one, “Is there something you aren’t telling us?”
“No, “I assured them, ”nothing imminent. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, keep this in your back pocket. Look, I’ve been listening to Fantasia and I just think this piece is the most beautiful fourteen minutes of music I’ve ever heard. It’s got it all. It’s elegiac, heraldic, powerful, part dirge, part pastoral, evocative. Very Elizabethan, very Queen Elizabeth I whom as you know is a heroine of mine. Musically it sums up a full life of glory, love, sadness and ecstasy. All the highs and lows of our mortal existence. Perfect for a sendoff.”
“Ok Mom, two things. 1) you should have led with that and 2) Elizabeth 1 is your idol? What else don’t I know about you?”
“Points taken. But here’s the thing, at Heather’s memorial service last week she chose In the Garden by Elvis Presley. I was sitting there and thought OK, not my first choice but I assume the King meant something to her and that got me thinking. What Iwould choose? And this is what I choose, capiche? And if you run the Fantasia CD through two loops, that covers the thirty minutes. Boom. Done. I’m going for the pretense of floating down the Thames on a funeral barge like the Queen of England. Why not? It’s my funeral. “
Proclamation delivered and that was that. Except it wasn’t. Listening to Fantasia always brings all kinds of emotions up to the surface as beautiful music does, but now that I’ve attached myself to it? Now it’s a very odd and sometimes tearful place head-wise, listening to the piece and visualizing how it will play out particularly in my children’s hearts at that eventual moment. I have never stood on the banks of the Thames leading my country to victory against the Spanish Armada, but I hope my son and daughter will hear in the notes the love and glory and the beauty of my being their mother.
Or maybe I should just ditch this and go with Who Let the Dogs Out?
