My husband had a great singing voice, as I've written before, and he loved to sing, especially to me. His baritone was very much like that of Robert Goulet's, but with a seasoning of Nelson Eddy's robustness. It was a lyric baritone with a sweet, mellow, flexible tone, lighter and higher in tessitura than a dramatic baritone.
I have a weak singing voice, though I do enjoy singing, so I could not really accompany him in duets, but I did enjoy playing piano accompaniment while he sang. I would forget everything listening to him and live inside his voice.
This video from the musical Carousel might give you a sense of what it was like.
I am still grappling with the reality of what has happened, the irretrievable past that should be..., the dark, yawning abyss of the future, a future without...without.... I can't say it. My mind shies away. It's been more than a quarter of a year but it seems like it just happened. The days rush by, the sun spinning across the cold sky, abandoning me to the long, long nights.
I push myself during the day, working relentlessly at physical tasks to tire myself out so I can sleep and abandon myself to dreams. I dread waking up. You can say I have my children to live for but somehow they are not enough. Oh, I love them dearly but they are my children, not my dear love, he from whom each day I gained purpose. Each day I lived was for him.
C.S. Lewis wrote that he was surprised at how much grief felt like fear. It's true.
Sometimes I sit with my mother, widowed herself not very long ago. I did not think I would be.... Well.... Sometimes she takes my hand as we sit together, calls me her sweet child. We don't say much to each other. No need.
My daughter has matured rapidly over the past months, taking over many household chores, managing my twin boys, taking care of the toddler when I....
Why all the ellipses? My thoughts fail me. I can't continue them.
You may say this will pass, as all things do. But I look at my mother and her grief has not lessened. She's old you may say. Her future is passed. But you have decades of life left to live. Life is for the living, so live it. Yes, I know. I know.
But at this moment, on this dark night, maybe I don't want to. Maybe I am afraid to.
And do you know how angry I am? Angry at what? Angry at who? Everything. Everything.
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How do you survive a complete and utter loss of hope?
Where do you live? Park Place, Main Street, Lake Shore Drive, Mulberry Lane, Lennox Ave., corner of 4th and Walnut, three miles out on Route 7? Come now, you know better than that. You may hang your hat anywhere at all, but you live in the black room of your own mind.
"The Black Room," first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on October 29, 1974.