Somber melody soothes the soul

On June 10, I left Staunton on a train to New York because my sister was having surgery for a brain tumor. After a horrendous eight weeks, she died. The experience is too raw for me to write about it now. I am still trying to grasp that she is gone. When the phone rang yesterday, for a split second I thought it might be Beth calling. Then I remembered.

So much has happened that I could have written a column every day I was in New York – except for the first time in my adult life, I simply could not write a word. The brutality of brain cancer rendered me barely able to eat, let alone express myself. Maybe later I can gather my thoughts, but not today. 

There were moments in which light did penetrate the darkness. It was my habit to walk in the evenings or whenever the opportunity arose. New Yorkers walk a lot anyway, but I was walking to save my sanity, my very soul.

My sister lived near Central Park. Those 800 acres got me out of the world of cancer and connected to people walking dogs, children playing, runners and young lovers. One day about dusk as I was walking along Fifth Avenue beside the park, I heard someone singing. I looked around and saw that people had stopped to hear the song and were looking at a 15-story apartment building across the street. There was just one open window, and although we could discern a person sitting there, it was impossible to tell her age or anything else about her in the fading light. I stood on the sidewalk and listened along with three women who had happened along. When they left, an older man took their place. “She does this all the time,” he said to me. “It makes me wonder if she is a shut-in. Someone should tell the newspaper about her.” (Note to reader: He meant the New York Times.) 

The man left, but I stayed on. I didn’t recognize the melody, and the melody didn’t change. It was in a minor key, a haunting, lovely song whose words we could not understand. I have no idea what it might have been.

In my sad and sorry state of mind, it was a bit of beauty that took me out of myself. It made me feel better. It felt like a gift. I dug into the few things I had with me for a pen and paper. All I could find was a tiny receipt from Annie’s Market where I had bought two or three grocery items a few nights before. On this square of paper I wrote a note to the singer thanking her for her song, and I crossed the street and approached the door of the apartment building. The doorman looked at me suspiciously and cracked open the door. I told him that if he knew the singer, I would love for him to pass along my appreciation to her. That broke the ice. He smiled and said, “I will see her tomorrow. They are some of the best people in the building.” 

As I walked away, I can’t say the sadness had lifted, but it had been joined by a joyful peace. When I return to New York, I will probably find myself wandering down Fifth Avenue at dusk listening for the singer whose clear voice reaches across the traffic to land like a blessing on those walking by on the broad sidewalk on the other side of the street.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.