What an interesting evening we had! The plan was to sing songs from a Mother’s Day playlist, and we did end up with a lot of talking and singing about mothers. But, we started with my funeral playlist, or rather my “MyFuneral” playlist. Funerals were the first topic last night, apropos of some recent experiences. We talked about how they can be inspiring and celebratory, or not. We hope that ours will be wonderful. To that end, I started a playlist of songs to suggest to my children. I want to ease some of the burden of the planning that too often comes abruptly, suddenly, and while you’re feeling bereft and overwhelmed. I also have a “death binder” on my computer, a folder of important documents and information about what my preferences are for what is done when I die. This was inspired by a newsletter I signed up for in 2021 “Dying Kindness” by Cianna Stewart. (She now has a podcast.) My death planning is one of the many weird ways that I try to be a good mother. And, a th...
It’s May!!!? This year is flying by. We had another lovely night singing songs by Canadian artists. We think we can probably sing only songs by Canadians for a year and never run out of songs that surprise us. And this is just songs that we can sing along to. There are Canadian opera singers, and jazz artists, and French singers, for example, whose music we wouldn’t be able to sing along with. There are big names in Canadian music, composers and performers of instrumental music, like Oscar Peterson or Moe Koffmann, Liona Boyd, Maynard Ferguson, Frank Mills whose music we're familiar with (I think I added these for Ian’s family). It’s wonderful that we Canadians have so much music in common. So many household names and common melodies that our ours. I just realized I had forgotten Shawn Mendes! I’m sure I’ll be adding to that list forever. Ah!Amanda Marshall. So much more to sing. Next week, please don't forget that we're not meeting on May 8th . I'm going to have a ...