Somewhere Over The Rainbow

(Mom’s 93rd birthday, June 13, 2011)

As my alarm went off this morning, and I got dressed for my morning walk, I couldn’t understand why I felt so exhausted.  I also could not explain this tune that kept running through my head.

As I began my walk, the previous night’s restlessness began to unfold in my brain.

Even though I plug into my iPod during my walk, and I try to select some appropriate walking music, that tune was running around in my head from my night’s sleep, and it kept coming to the forefront of my thoughts.

You may recognize the song from the first line of the lyrics, and it goes like this.

“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby”

As I continued on my walk that tune just was relentless inside my head. After a measurement of time that I could not quantify, I finally acquiesced to the music, found that song on my iPod, and selected it.  I have two different artists’ versions, but I knew which one of the artists I wanted to listen.

Years ago I bought the DVD/CD entitled “One More Car, One More Driver”, by Eric Clapton.  Clapton does an acoustical version of this song that is really so cool!  So I scrolled through the play lists, found this version, and selected it for my listening pleasure.

As the music played it became very clear to me that this song was placed into my head because I must have been dreaming about my Mom during the night.  After all, today is June 13th, and it would have been her 95th birthday.  Additionally, it is the first time I have had to celebrate her birthday without her!

Each time the song finished playing, I would push replay again, and again, and again.  I must have listened to this song a half dozen times this morning!  I was not sure how or why I was directed to play this particular song, but I was!

When I finished my walk I returned to my RV to get cleaned up for the day. My first order of business was to make a trip to the cemetery to visit my Mother’s grave.  After arriving at my Mom’s grave, that song reappeared inside of my head.  I could not get it out of my head!

Both of parent’s graves were slightly covered in pine needles.  Not having a wisk broom in my possession, and having that song running rampant in my head, I was trying desperately to wipe off the debris from the headstones, when I heard a familiar voice.  It was my nephew, who too, was there to visit my Mom, his grandmother’s grave on her birthday.

It was at this time, with this song blaring inside my brain, and all the emotions that I was feeling deep inside, the grief, and the sadness that still lingers within, that I figured out that this song was a message from my Mom!

After concluding all my errands of the day, groceries, and a doctor’s appointment, I returned to my RV.  Once again I found this song and played it once again.  And again it reaffirmed, in my mind, that it was, indeed, a message from my Mom!

So, I have embedded the Eric Clapton video version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”.  Maybe you will go along with me in my analysis of my Wednesday night and Thursday morning!

Happy 95th Birthday Mom, I miss you very much!

Til we meet again, somewhere over the rainbow!