I got my love of music from my mother. I know a lot of oldies songs because of her. She liked to listen mostly to songs from the 60s. I like to think that it was because they brought back happy memories to her.
There have been at least three occasions while I’m here in Canada that a song brought back memories of my mother. The first occasion was in a church during a wedding ceremony. The wedding singer sang “A Time for Us”, which was one of my mother’s favourite songs. The second occasion was when we were in the car and the boy played a cover version of “Moonriver” on the car stereo. My mum asked me to me sing the day before she died. It was the only song that I could think of so I sang it for her. The last one was a couple of days ago, when one of the characters in the TV show “Lost” sang “La Mer”, which was also one of my mother’s favourite songs.
I’m sure there was also an occasion when I heard “Solitaire” playing but I can’t remember exactly when or where. It was the song playing in the hospital’s P.A. system when we were taking my mother’s body to the morgue.
When she was happy, my mum would sing, and when she was singing, I would have a very good day. She didn’t sing much in the last couple of years of her life.