I think it’s fair that I warn you that this post is very personal for me, and highly emotional. I’m blogging it because it helps me release it.

The great chef Mario understands the power of music.

It’s amazing how hearing just those first few notes of a song can transport you, INSTANTLY to a moment in time. Last Sunday my husband and I drove to Eugene to get out of the house and on the way back we found a station that was playing all the ‘old favorites’ from our past. “One Headlight” from the Wallflowers, came on the radio. Instantly I was back in Marina del Rey, on our sailboat drinking margaritas with my best friend Wendy. We spent pretty much every day sunning ourselves on the deck of the boat, laughing our guts out, flashing the helicopters, and just living some of the best moments of our friendship. That song was on the radio, non-stop during that time…. so whenever I hear it, I refer to it as “the boat song” as it takes me back to those years on our sailboat.

So I’m the car and I’m all excited to hear my song… my “anthem” of the good times past…. and I’m all prepared to sing along, as I have countless times before. You know those songs you have sang a million times, so it mindlessly comes out without any effort of remembering the words. Those first few notes play and I start to sing. The very first 3 lines come out:
“So long ago, I don’t remember when
That’s when they say I lost my only friend
Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease”

Oh my God – the tears came flooding down my face in a rush like the water from Niagra Falls. The sound the stopped, the words stopped, it felt like the earth stopped. Years ago, I lost her, my best friend Wendy, my true soul sister, my partner in crime. Gone are the days of lounging on the boat deck with her – as she suddenly died, years back, just a few short days after giving birth to her 4th child. Just like that. Her aorta exploded because she had Marfan’s Syndrome, and the birth of her child put too much stress on her heart.

I’ve sang that song a million times and it just hit me like a brick. F*ck.