VH1's Sound Affects

My aunt and her boys in 1968.

My after-school job in those days was delivering newspapers. I walked the same route that both my cousins, David and Dan, had walked for years. Everyday my Gram helped me deliver those papers. Together we delivered the Easton Express even when our family's tragedy was spread across the front page.

Several days after Eva's death and funeral, we discovered that my aunt had begun Christmas shopping. She had one item for each of us in the immediate family. I wondered what last, parting gift I might receive from this woman who was so beautiful, so spunky, so strong and yet so fragile. What might I receive from a woman who was such a role model, a woman many people (even her gentleman suitors) thought was my mother?

It was an album. It was Synchronicity by The Police. The band's last and most successful studio album.

The last picture taken of my aunt before her death.

We're still feeling the cataclysmic effects of her death and my cousin's trial, even 17 years later. As I told my story to VH1, the memories became so real and so raw that I lost composure on camera. Today as I was looking for pictures to send to VH1, my grandmother showed me the dress she wore to my aunt's wedding in 1966. She solemnly expressed to me her wish to be buried in that dress.

Thank you--SO much--for reading. Sometimes life is so painful that talk, people, drinking, and other things just don't seem to help. For me, the only solace in moments of deepest despair is music.

Thanks for the memories.

And so, my humblest thanks go to The Police for providing the inspiration to survive whatever life throws at me, and to VH1 for letting me tell the world how an ordinary person was touched by extraordinary music.

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