01 Apr Lions and Light Perpetual

I went to Ohio last week to see my mother and sister, leaving a day earlier than planned to beat the storm that was brewing. March, it seemed, would go out like a lion. As I drove through the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge on I-90 late in the day, layers of dark clouds piled up, even as sunbursts fought their way through (most not making it to the ground, stopped by a lower bank of clouds). As the clouds slowly coalesced on the left, a solid patch of blue formed higher up on the right.

As it happened, I had the perfect soundtrack for the drama playing out overhead: Faure’s Requiem. The Brattleboro Concert Choir is performing it this spring, and I picked up a CD for the car so I could listen on my drive. I’ve sung the Requiem four or five times before, but today, the piece’s transcendent beauty, its serene pulse punctuated by moments of almost unbearable dread, hits pretty close to home. The dread, I’ve got down pat – Mom fell the week before my trip, and though she apparently didn’t hurt herself beyond a sore ankle, my sister said it seemed she had aged a year in a week.

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I’m using Mom’s Requiem score from December 1977. Mom is an alto, so that’s the part that’s marked with a yellow highlighter. Her markings (always in red pen) – the spots she’s circled, knowing she struggled over the same moments as me, just seeing her handwriting on the page – both reassure and undo me. 

Mom sang with an oratorio society in Newton, NJ, for many years. She would stop and pick up her friend Wanda on the way to rehearsal. It must have been a relief to be away from five kids – no squabbles, no laundry, no dishes, no one asking her to find something, fix something – for those few hours a week. We went to all of her concerts. She always made her lemon-snow bars for the reception that followed the concert, and we were always thrilled by the punch, which had whole tubs of sherbet in it. The music? Well, let’s just say Judas Maccabeus can test a nine-year-old’s patience. I didn’t appreciate it enough then, but have been part of one chorus or another for over 30 years. (And, yes, I have sung Judas Maccabeus, using Mom’s score, and loved it.)

Mom stopped singing with her group when night-driving became too hard. At the time, I couldn’t really know what she was giving up — the camaraderie, the challenge of learning new music, the chance to sing incredible choral works. Looking back, it was her first concession to her failing eyesight (and hearing). 

Besides her obvious fragility, physical and emotional, I was overwhelmed by Mom’s loneliness on this visit. What I wouldn’t give for her to be back in Newton with Wanda, picking up her score and getting ready to sing the Offertoire, one of those movements that makes every soprano wish she were an alto.

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Years ago, Mom and Dad came to hear me sing in a performance of the Requiem at Northfield Mount Hermon. As we walked out together into the cool autumn air, Mom said she hoped she heard the In Paradisum when she got to heaven. This is pretty common, I think. After all, it’s right there in the text: Chorus angelorum te suscipiat/May the choir of angels receive you. Faure’s genius is that he makes paradise feel inevitable: It’s an invitation to, as much as an evocation of, eternity. I remember that day now and want to cry. Partly because I know Mom’s own ending, though unwritten, is so much closer  now . . .  because Dad is already gone . . . because one day I’ll stop singing too.

While I was in Ohio, Mom said it made her happy to know I was using her score, but when I played the Requiem in the car as we drove back and forth to my sister’s house, she couldn’t hear it. I trust she will when it counts. ~ Hilary Farquhar