One Year Post-Concussion & The Death of a Loved One

When I got home from my California trip, I found that my usually very healthy Mom had become very sick. On April 30th, 2019, I brought my Mom to the hospital. That day was the first day we heard the word “cancer.” 

14 days later, on May 13, 2019 - my 27th birthday - she passed away from an aggressive, rapidly developing cancer that had metastasized in her liver. My world got turned upside down again, the truest light of my life, my rock, my comfort - gone. But what she left me with will never fade.

The day before she passed was Mother’s Day. A friend brought a keyboard into the hospital so that I could play and sing for her. When my fingers touched the keys... it felt like I could breathe again. It felt like I had been holding my breath for the past two weeks in the hospital with all the tension of uncertainty, of waiting for diagnosis, of taking notes and doing the best I could to keep my brain intact enough to keep up... 

But when my fingers swept across the keys and I started singing, I felt home again. It was like the light inside me spread to my whole body and into the room. It gave me a deep, visceral feeling that this was what I was meant to do.  

As she rested, loved ones and I sang the songs that she and I had been singing together all my life. I was able to give back to her just some of what she gave to me. It was then that I knew music was so deeply a part of me that it would always be with me, through my brain injury, through trauma, through grief, and beyond.