THE STOLEN LULLABY
THE STOLEN LULLABY
By John Thomas Tuft
I am in the bedroom trying to separate stacks of CDs full of my favorite music. It is Good Friday. The day of the stolen lullaby. The CDs are sticky and grimy. I pick up a few and carry them into the bathroom where I’ve prepared a sink full of soapy water. I spend the rest of the afternoon performing this cleansing as though it is some sacrament of penance. A prelude to hope and a new dawn. Over and over. The CDs are full of the music that I listen to in order to distract me from the pain. My endless Good Friday of pain. Never ending. Never stilled. This is the bed that I fell off of. The pain as I caught myself, face up, on my hands and feet. The pain is excruciating in my left leg. I pull myself up back onto the bed because I cannot face one more ride in the ambulance to the confusion and shaming looks of the Emergency Room. So, I walked around for a week on a broken leg. It hurts terribly, but what is one more source of pain? I take more pain meds, more morphine and fentanyl. The stupor they induce makes me clumsy and I spilled my soft drink all over my CDs.
As I perform this ablation of renewal, I recall being a very small child, in my mother’s arms, in a rocking chair, in the bedroom of a nondescript house in Beaver Falls, PA. It is owned by the church down at the corner. As she rocks me, she hums softly. Her lips are near my ear, and it feels like this music is just for me. That I alone receive the gift of her breath, her lullaby. It is the singular point in the day when I, and I alone, receive her attention. The three of us younger kids even get punished together. My younger brother, Danny, Susie, the next older from me, and I are the youngest of the seven children she has borne, barely out of diapers, first into bed each night. We each get our ten minutes or so of this affection, this tenderness that leaves an indelible mark upon my soul. The tears that come unbidden even as I write these words are a testament. Unwritten in any sacred text, real or imagined. But the lullaby that will carry me away some day, her breath in my ear as I take the last of my breathing. For such is love…
Now, I put on headphones to have the music play for me. Into me. To distract from the pain. To distract from the lack of hope. To cover up the loss of purpose. To drown out the silence of straining to hear her lullaby once again. I pick up some Gordon Lightfoot, some Coldplay, some Eagles, and some Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I slowly shuffle to the bathroom and immerse them in the baptism of renewal. Warm soapy water to remove the consequences of my own foolishness. Back to the bedroom to blot them with a soft cloth. In the depths of my drug fog, my depression, my myopic miasma of emptiness I often hallucinate. I am sure that Susan and my mother are there in the room. Sometimes they bring my grandmother. All of them, of course, are dead. When I stare hard enough, I see only an empty chair, a vacant corner. But they are there. And it is strangely comforting. As though they will accompany me from Good Friday to Easter. For such is love…
Maybe. I am cleaning all of my music in preparation. Easter is the day I will enter assisted living. I have become difficult to live with. Difficult to manage. I lay out my CDs on the cozy comforter atop the bed. The same bed that has a half dozen pillows. To support my damaged back. To place under my knees to help with my damaged hips. To hug close in the night when I want to scream and cry. The lullaby is stolen. And I have no one else to blame. This is the bed where I awaken from the drug induced sleep of the dead, full of morphine induced nightmares, my bladder filled to the level of red alert. And I turn to the side and because I don’t care, I piss on the rug, then go back to sleep. Leave the dead to bury the dead. My children look upon me with pity and distress. Maybe even disgust. I am too much of a coward to ask.
Perhaps mixing alcohol with the morphine and Valium is the way to deal with Good Friday. I blame them for the stolen lullaby. Not the guy in the mirror. Beaver County read his stories in the newspaper for ten years. They hang on refrigerators from Beaver to Alliquippa, into Butler County and Sewickley. He wrote a novel that got him compared to Frederick Buechner. All of his books sit in a box in a garage. The guy who managed a herd of sheep on the farm of his dying sister. Somehow… Somehow. I should have had that rocking chair there in her bedroom. Sitting there watching in her suffering, humming that lullaby from long ago. And far away. Would that have been a comfort? I pick up my cleansed CDs and put them away. Ready for my descent. Susan and Mom and Grandma watch from the corner. For such is love…
As I write this, I’m sitting in a comfortable room. In a comfortable house that we own in central Virginia. Spring is going on outside. The big dog is sleeping with his head under the bed. The little dog runs in to share my Cheerios. Lillie prepares lunch before going to spend the afternoon with her wild lady friends. I am surrounded by love. When I step out onto the porch, the breeze rushes off the mountains and across the lake. It feels like a whisper against my ear. Of a stolen lullaby. Maybe. Just maybe, Easter is only one more step on a long journey. Through our Good Fridays. And beyond…
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
