Sunday SIngalong - Cures and Ills

 

Did you walk yesterday? I mean, did you walk for any special causes? So many causes need to be recognized, need to have fundraisers, need to be eradicated. Yesterday (29 April 2023) is a day for Pancreatic Cancer awareness. This does not mean that, once April 29^th is over, we no longer need to be aware of this disease, it's that large amounts of money, particularly for the PanCan organization, was raised to create awareness-raising.

I am not going to get on a soap box about this, or any disease. Goodness knows, there are many that are ravaging our communities and destroying families. But those same diseases are bringing folks together with a combined desire to do what is ever possible to make the disease researched and eradicated.

I’d love to say that pancreatic cancer has never touched my life, but off the top of my head I can point to at least 3 good friends and 1 good husband who succumbed. Watching a loved one taken, oh so slowly, by the cancer monster (whatever the cancer may be) is devastating. Nothing has given me such a helpless feeling as that. So, what is there to sing about here, you ask? Sometimes the mere singing (together, but even privately) can lift spirits. My husband and I used to sing together (often á cappella and without any plan to do so . . . we’d be talking about something, watching a TV show, or just doing a task together and we’d be struck with a song, usually inspired by whatever was happening . . . yeah, sort of like a musical . . . though I don’t recall ever running up a hillside and singing about the hills being alive with music). And I remember sharing music with my friend Pernell Roberts (once, during a lengthy visit, we did some singing together, even though his body was already frail from pancreatic cancer . . . still, he sang, though just a but, preferring to listen to me sing to him). Music ties us together.

So, what song today, and on what theme? How about illness. But it does not need to be a sad song, it can be something that is uplifting. Maybe something that helps you forget an illness (bodily or societal). My choice (and this has taken some time to select):

"Me and a Couple of Angels," by Tom Paxton, ©2002 on Looking for the Moon 

written for his sweet wife, who was ill and holding on to Tom, their 2 daughters, and three grandsons.

Midge died 1 June 2014 of pneumonia, following a long bout with an autoimmune disease. She was 69.