How Singing Became My Personal Road to Redemption

I have always been an ‘almost’ singer – as in, I could almost really do this.

Maybe. Someday. If I had about ten times more courage.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I danced along as a nun in yet another community theater production of The Sound of Music. Or I wowed the crowd, briefly, at one more terrified open mic night in some bar in the middle of nowhere.

Singing was something I was always naturally good at, and trained in, from an early age. My voice was big and clear, and my eager father fantasized I might someday be a star. This was a fact he reminded me about frequently, including on his death bed.

“Sing! Sing!” Dad would implore. I’d stand in a kitchen doorway in my socks, singing ‘Edelweiss’, and tears would stream down his face. Wordless, he’d shake his head in appreciation.

I was the kid with lots of potential. It was terrifying.

There were voice lessons in New York, and a brief stint as a cabaret performer in a Kosher Japanese restaurant. I gamely showed up for the non-union, ‘cattle call’ auditions posted in Backstage, where I was surrounded by limber dancers in spandex who could sing. Once I even got a call back. But I didn’t go. I simply couldn’t handle the pressure.

The fact was that I felt awkward and exposed when I sang, and my knees literally shook in front of audiences. And that teary, verklempt image of my Dad was never far from my mind, as well. I knew that I would never be brilliant enough to be that star he so badly wanted me to be.

By the time I was thirty, the dream of being a singer was pretty much dead. Ultimately, I found other things to do with my life, including having a daughter. As luck would have it, she, too, could sing. In fact, she was a better singer than me.

At the age of 14 months, Teal could sing Happy Birthday perfectly to her own lyrics (“Appa-ju-ju … Appa juice!”) And by the time she was eight, she was discovered by a Broadway agent who heard her singing on a play date with her child. Immediately, Teal began auditioning for Broadway shows and getting call backs. Yet, all of this happened just as we were leaving New York, and so her would-be career was nipped in the bud.

Teal didn’t seem to mind one bit. “I’m only eight,” she reasoned.

The fact was that, like me, Teal was also an ‘almost’ singer. Her heart was tender and her sensitivity paramount, though she did, indeed, love to sing. Ten years later, she arrived at a world famous institute of music to study the blues. Again, her biggest hurdle was her massive stage fright.

By the end of her first semester, I got a frantic call from her roommates. Teal had been in bed for two days having severe anxiety attacks. In fact, she was having a nervous breakdown. “Don’t call my mother,” she’d begged her friends.

She didn’t want me to know that she, too, felt incapable of becoming a star. It was that exquisite torture I knew so well … the need to sing, yet the abject fear of not getting it right. And of disappointing the people you loved.

Though Teal returned to music school for one more year, she eventually drifted towards the blues scene in Austin, Texas, where her panic worsened. Finally, she called me up. “Mom,” she said plaintively. “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” She was done with the constant fear and pressure of performing, she said. Teal packed up her guitar, and moved on to look for the next thing.

But then, two years later, the unthinkable happened. Teal had collapsed from a medically unexplainable cardiac arrest and died six days later.

So I did what all mothers who lose children must eventually do. I had to either crumble into a million irretrievable pieces … or make something out of the rest of my life. I chose the latter, operating on the theory that this was my chance to push the reset button. And that it was a way to deeply honor my daughter the best I could.

I told myself I would get on with all those things I’d always been too afraid or resistant to try.

Not surprisingly, singing found me once more. I was at a dinner party that evolved into a music jam. It was late and the crowd had thinned, so I figured it might be safe to actually sing something. A new friend pulled out her guitar, and I began to sing ballads. Soon after, she called to ask if I’d like to be a back up singer with her band.

At the same time, I joined a church with a choir led by a charismatic gospel singer, and I knew as soon as I heard them that this was where I belonged. Only this time, I simply went for the love of signing.

Somehow, now my performance didn’t seem to matter so much. At first, I was primarily focused on keeping it together. But as time went by, my grief began to recede and I relaxed. More importantly, I was doing what I loved now without a bit of hesitation.

Within a year, I was performing for the congregation on occasional non-choir Sundays. I could sing anything I wanted, so I found myself drawn to pieces Teal might have chosen. The first Sunday I did this, a friend and I sang a slowed-down blues interpretation of ‘If I Had a Hammer’.

As I stood there and let the words pour through me, I found myself letting go in an entirely new way. Gone was the old pressure for perfection or the need to be a star. Gone was the desire to make anyone happy but myself. Instead, I was a new singer now, forged out of some impenetrable metal that helped me stand in my strength and own every inch of that song. Now I was connected not only to my heart, but to all the people listening to my song as well.

In that moment of transformation, the piece became a wailing tribute to all the pain and suffering I saw all around me, and how much I wanted to heal it. I found myself lifting off into improvised riffs, the notes soaring through the air as I sang from my gut.

This, I began to understand, was the gift of my daughter’s death. It had, in fact, set me free.

After the service, congregants shook my hand with tears in their eyes, and I realized I was singing the song just as Teal might have. In fact, I was singing it for her … in gratitude for who’d she’d been when she walked this earth. And for who I’d become, as I reinvented myself after her death.

I was no longer here to please anyone but myself, for I’d been to the edge of life and now I knew the truth. Our days are meant to be lived with joy, every last one of them. So I sing on for Teal … but also, mostly, for me.

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