Mountaintop song feels heaven-sent

When a parent takes a last breath, their voice heard no more, a life song stills. Where once there were melodious moments, now the echo of grief crescendos in the hearts of family left behind.

“Time heals,” others may say. But for the child living inside each of us, mourning resonates for months, even years with the slightest breath of a memory. And like a little one who reaches for a mother or father’s sturdy hand, our very being longs to feel that loving assurance once again.

Upon occasion, a coincidence brings solace and hope.

“After I lost my mom,” retired Kennewick schoolteacher Beth reflects on the unexpected death, “I really missed that connection – calling every morning on the way to work and evenings on the way home.”

Already distraught from the loss of her dad three years earlier, this had been a special time each day, one that cheered both daughter and mother. But life took a turn when her mom was diagnosed with late stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Within two weeks of the report, she was gone, too.

A depth of sadness clung to Beth like a haunting tune. In her grief, a helping hand reached out to her.

“A friend called and said, ‘Let’s go hike Badger Mountain,’” the petite blonde remembers of that mid-morning on the cusp of spring. “I hadn’t done it in a very long time, so we drove out there.”

As the two women walked up the mountain path, the fragrance of sage and a lingering chill in the air, Beth wistfully reminisced how much her dad – a native of Montana – had enjoyed nature.

“We lived along the river in Pasco” Beth comments, recalling her childhood, “and he’d call me out to listen to the meadowlark trill and say, ‘Have you ever heard anything more beautiful?’”

But in recent memory and many hikes on the mountain, Beth pondered how the meadowlark and its song were absent.

“I was remarking that it’d been years since I’d heard a meadowlark,” the avid walker remembers of that day in 2010, “kind of lamenting that it was my dad’s favorite bird.”

And then something unexpected happened.

“I’d just finished saying that, and no more than 10 feet away a meadowlark started to sing,” Beth says with a catch in her voice. “I could see it, and it would pause for a moment and then repeat – singing and singing.”

Then from the surrounding fields and mountainside came a cacophony of meadowlark trills – a concert that lasted for countless minutes.

“It seemed like it was for me,” she says of that rare incident, one neither Beth nor her hiking partner has experienced since. “I took it as a sign that my dad was saying, ‘We’re happy! Don’t worry!’”

In those melodic moments, peace connected to her spirit. And like a “small miracle,” the little meadowlark and accompanying “choir” gave this grieving woman a new heart song.

A song that felt heaven-sent.

If you have a story idea for Light Notes, email lluginbill@tricityherald.com. Follow Lucy on Twitter @LucyLuginbill

This story was originally published January 18, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Mountaintop song feels heaven-sent."