The Last Music She Heard: a guest post by Garreth Brooke
To watch a loved one die while cradled in the notes of a song they loved is a beautiful experience. To have one’s own music chosen as a dying person’s death music is an indescribably humbling gift—one that composer and pianist Garreth Brooke was given. In this guest post Garreth speaks of the power of music to carry us through life and to gently usher us out of it. And here, in this vulnerable, heart-felt, very personal essay, is his story—a story of music, life, death, grief, and the gift of meaning and love found within the heart of loss.
The Last Music She Heard: a guest post by Garreth Brooke
Something extraordinary happened to me recently.
The most elegant way I’ve found to describe it is this:
Someone chose to leave this world while listening to my music.
***
Here’s the story. My mother-in-law, Monika, was in hospice for most of the first part of this year. She has always been very supportive of my music (I owe her more than I can say) so I tried to comfort her by playing the piano for her. The hospice staff asked me to leave the door open so that the other patients could listen in.
A young woman named Daria was in the room next door. I later learned that she and her family loved the music, my Life Through Loss album, and they asked if they could hear it again. We gave them the CD, and over the following weeks they played it many times.
When Daria passed, Life Through Loss was the music they chose to play. It was the last music she heard.
***
Those are the bare facts, as simply and plainly as I can put them. As soon as I try to say more than the bare facts, I struggle to find the right words.
To say that this is meaningful to me is to understate it. It is one of the most profound experiences I’ve had. When I first learned of it, I had spine tingles for about 30 minutes straight and it made me cry. Weeks later it still feels indescribably profound.
There’s something so precious about those final moments that I want to use the word “holy” to describe them. I hesitate because it is a loaded word, but it comes somewhere near if you can imagine it stripped of its religious baggage.
I think most people understand what I mean there, but the vast majority of people spend their lives avoiding thinking about death. How can I find the right words to talk about a topic that no-one wants to hear about?
This is a challenge I know well. Life Through Loss is an album about grief, and I often struggle to find the right balance between clarity and bluntness, and between emotional honesty and emotional distance. So why talk about grief at all?
***
Grief gives our lives meaning.
I would never have had that extraordinary experience if I hadn’t experienced grief.
Indeed, there’s a way of telling the story of my life that suggests that was the moment my life has been leading up to.
I have lived with grief and the fear of grief for a quarter century. My Mum attempted suicide when I was 15, and from then on the fear infused the very air I breathed, warping my decisions, causing me to drift through my twenties. Shortly before I turned 30 my fear was realised: my Mum took her life. I grieved intensely.
To my surprise, I found that the loss didn’t destroy me. On the contrary, my grief gave me fuel to live the kind of life I wanted, and to pursue goals I had previously dismissed as impossible. In the decade since, talking about grief and playing the piano have become central to my work. I now volunteer as a grief companion, talking to people as they go through grief. I compose elegies, music for grieving people, music that honours their loved ones.
When I talk to people who are grieving, again and again I see that they have learned about how to live a better life. They know that relationships and friendships are what make life joyful, and they begin to love more deeply. Their grief causes them to put down their phone, ignore work trivialities, worry less about money, and instead pay attention to the things that they truly love. They remember that their lives have an end and they decide to make the most of their time on this earth.
The grieving know what matters.
***
If we want to know what matters in life, we should talk more about death. I do this when I perform Life Through Loss and every time, I see how intensely it touches people.
But we generally avoid the topic. We all know how hard it can be to find the right words for someone who has lost someone, and we probably can all remember a time when we’ve chosen the wrong words:
“At least they’re in a better place”
“My husband/mum/dog died, I know how you feel”
“You won’t always feel this bad”
Behind each of those sentences lie good intentions and the desire to comfort. Some of those sentences may even be half true. Yet each has the power to wound and offend, especially when said at the wrong time.
The easiest way to avoid saying the wrong thing is to say nothing at all. But almost all grieving people struggle with feeling alone, abandoned by a society that just wants them to “get back to normal” as quickly as possible.
The loneliness is exacerbated by the uniqueness of each grief. My grief is for my Mum, but it is not the same as yours for your mother. They were different people; they died at different times in our lives; they died in different ways: I cannot fully understand your grief, and I never will. But you don’t always need to understand. You just need to listen.
The best way to talk to grieving people is not to try to comfort them. The best way is simply to ask them about what they are going through, then allow them to talk—or not talk—about whatever they want.
In other words, we should attempt to connect.
***
Nowadays, when I talk about my grief during my Life Through Loss concerts, I focus on talking about what it has given me. This helps me far more than focusing on what I have lost.
My Mum was a pianist and she helped me learn. When I play the piano I feel like I’m doing it with her. More than a decade after her death, it is a lovely way to spend time with her.
My Mum was also a good listener, someone who really cared about people who were going through difficult times, and I’ve inherited that from her. When I listen to grieving people, I bring her goodness back into the world.
My Mum was also a person troubled by anxiety and depression, which I think at root were caused by fear, so I try to live my life less fearfully.
When I talk to grieving people, some of the questions I ask are:
What is it that you cherish about your loved one?
How can you do more of that?
What is it that you found hard about the life of your loved one?
How can you avoid making the same mistakes?
Thinking hard about these questions can help us to lead better lives.
***
Death is frightening. We can all agree on that. But we cannot avoid it, so we might as well allow it to teach us something.
My grief taught me that one of the most wonderful things I can do on this earth is to connect with people. I talk openly about grief, and I compose music that explores it. Doing so makes my life better every day: more intense, more beautiful, more exhilarating.
In doing so, I am constantly reminded that I will suffer when I lose the people I love. I choose to do it anyway. That suffering is a price I would rather pay than the one I would pay by cutting myself off.
When the people we love die, the love survives their death. It remains, transformed by grief into an unfamiliar and uncomfortable form, but it is still love, and we can keep some of what we loved about them in the world.
We are all going to die. While we are alive, we might as well choose to live fully: love, grieve, take risks, connect.
I still don’t really know how to talk about Daria’s passing and I think that’s OK, because it’s not my story to tell. What I can say is that I am profoundly grateful to have been a small part of her life. It gives me hope that music about grief can help people to embrace life.
Photo by Nick Scheerbert, courtesy of Upsplash
Garreth Brooke is a musician based in Frankfurt, Germany. He works as a pianist, composer, writer, teacher and a grief companion. He sometimes uses the pen name Garreth Broke (a joke that has got way out of hand.) “Full of warmth and intimacy, beauty, contrast, and dynamism. The depth of the compositions matches the dazzling technical skill. Broke plays with effortless grace, always focused and with profound inner reflection. Life Through Loss is an extraordinary album that helps anyone experiencing grief to integrate loss into the fabric of life.” — Hans Kaltwasser, DerKulturBlog
“Very sensitive and utterly emotive” — Rondo Magazine
“One of the brightest upcoming voices in piano education today” — Andrew Eales, PianoDao.com