Topic: Music

I'm an emotional guy. It is easy to "get" me, to set me to crying. Here and there a tear will fall when I see something beautiful. But when the time comes in a Mass to sing, "I am the Bread of Life..." I'm a gigantic mess.

You see, "I am the Bread of Life" is a beautiful song. I love it. But it's been ruined for me. I've heard it and sung it in too many funerals. The refrain has a glorious build, "And He will raise you up-- and He will raise you up-- and He will raise you up on the last Day!" I suggest you listen to it. It is just plain moving.

But I can't stand to sing it. In the TV show Angel, the Angel gang goes to sing karaoke in order to have their auras and futures read by a demon, Lorne. Wesley, I believe, explains that when you sing you bear your soul and Lorne could read it.

I began to the dread Bread of Life as my beloved Aunt started to slip away. Aunt Mary Ellen, my father's sister, was one of my favorite people in the world. She'd survived Breast Cancer and her hysterectomy. I'd seen her most recently in the October of 2004 as I swung through DC to Rhode Island and back again. I had the feeling I was seeing her for the last time. Early in 2006, with my Angie in St. Louis, I got the call that I'd better get to DC- this was going to be the last time to see her. And in every Boyle funeral, we sung Bread of Life.

She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years before and been given three years to live. She was still all there, undaunted. It was still hard to look. I pushed the truth away.

I had one last conversation with her- she knew she would not make it to my wedding, but promised she'd be there. She got me.

She died in May. I sat in the crypt church of the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as we celebrated her funeral mass. I prayed as I leafed through the program, praying the Boyle tradition of using Bread of Life. Oh, shit. There it was.

The intro played. The soloist sung beautifully and I tried to sing along. "I am the bread of--" and my voice broke. That song was performed at the funerals of my grandfather, my grandmother, and I'd even sung it in choir over the casket of a 12 year old. I don't know how much of the song I spent weeping. It was probably most of it.


I had been numb for so long, having to sing, having to bear my soul, it made the moment that much more difficult, but I pushed through, weeping, singing, slumping.

The years have shown my ire for the song diminish, but the last time I heard it, as an "offering of gifts" song, I still could not sing it all.

Music can remind you of anything. But that song is just rough for me.