A Song for Grandmothers

Of Nona's and Nana's

I have a confession to make: Words have always been somewhat an afterthought for me. I work hard at it, at speaking and writing in particular, but I couldn’t even accurately quote my own book, let alone someone else’s beautifully crafted words. When I’m out playing live music the lyrics are the last thing on my mind, and I’ll sometimes draw blanks on things I’ve played a hundred times. To me, if a picture is worth a thousand words, the sound of a song is priceless.

My mother in law, or Nona as she is affectionately known by her growing pack of seven grandchildren, turned the Big 7-0 this past week. The middle child of eight brothers and sisters, themselves all grandchildren of Irish immigrants, she probably had to fight to be heard for most of her childhood. And her most effective weapon was a massive singing voice that compelled everyone else to shut up and listen.

My daughter L has that same gift, the same fierce desire to be heard. A voice that creates silence.

As a birthday gift for her grandmother, she and I recorded a live take of one of Nona’s favorite family songs so she would always have it — Danny Boy. An Irish folk tune with English words that has become well known as an Irish dirge, well known almost to the point of triteness. But I’ve heard Nona sing it herself on more than a handful of occasions, and each time I cannot help but marvel at the power of it, how it connects her with what is gone, with her childhood, her parents, her favorite grandmother, her ancestors…

…the song somehow feels like an elegy for something that hasn’t yet passed. That maybe mourning isn’t just an expression of loss, but knowledge of an impossible reunion to come.

Through an hour and a half of technical difficulties and dad frustration and repeated guitar playing mistakes, L sang it on a Thursday night in one take.

I’d forgotten, but she’d had practice. Practice with my own grandmother.

---

Something strange happened in an interview conversation with

Kimberly Warner

last month. She was contemplating how I got answers to certain questions, and she got this sudden look and said, “Part of me thinks you have a grandmother, a deceased grandmother, who just loves the hell outta you. And she’s just like deedeedoodoodoo whispering” answers and guidance in my ear.

I was pretty stunned, because she was dead on describing the essence of my Nana, who had passed five years ago.

Kim went on to say “How do some people tune in like that, or channel, or whatever?”
And I was laughing inside, because there she was, displaying that very aptitude. As a gifted interviewer and an even better listener, Kim was tuning into my field, picking up the resonance of my ancestors — one in particular who is very special to me.

I’ve learned through lots of inexplicable experience that the “dead” are much closer than we think — in actual fact they are always just a thought away. Kim’s comment brought my Nana closer to the forefront of my awareness than she had been in years. And for the past month since, I’ve felt her increased presence around me.¹

But I didn’t know why it was happening, why she was there… there’s always a reason, but it’s not always linear; all I knew was that something wanted to play out. To be heard.

So this past Saturday, after a long day of family celebration, L and her grandmother were half-collapsed on the couch together — the perfect time to give Nona her birthday gift. I screencast the song onto the TV and turned up the volume. Everyone got quiet and listened, and I got to watch grandmother and granddaughter arm in arm, eyes shining, breath catching, the fiercest proudest love I’ve ever witnessed because her Nona knows she is finally being seen and heard through and through by her own future, her own flesh and blood, and in the stillpoint of that power, their power

time expands and the scene shifts and I am somewhere else at the same time…

A part of me knows as I cradle the phone on my ear — this is the last time we’ll ever talk.

It is March of 2020, the early whispers of what would become known as Covid-19 becoming louder, and my Nana’s health was fading fast. Her doctors said she didn’t have long.

I tell her about her great grandkids, about my wife who she so adores, what they’re doing in school, painting images with words, all the while thinking How can I honor her? How can I tell her what she really means to me? I don’t have the words… I never seem to have the words…

Nine-year-old L comes traipsing through the room then, the happy go lucky tornadic force of creative nature she is and will always be. And I have my answer.

“L will you sing a song for Nana?”

“What song, Daddy?”

“Anything — it’s for Nana, you pick.”

L hops onto the couch next to me, perching where she would hold her Nona five years later

she takes my phone

she takes a breath

   she sings Danny Boy.

My Nana and I never spoke again, not in words, and she passed a few days later.

Somehow I’d forgotten that Danny Boy was the song my daughter had chosen for my Nana, the song that let me say goodbye to her.

But the last thing I said to my grandmother I do remember, because in the silence that always follows my daughter’s voice I wrote it down: “We’ll talk again.”

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—
Oh, Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so!

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Avé there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

1. Or simply, “she’s been crossing my mind a lot more lately,” to put it in less woo terms.