Dear John

Decided to go out to a classical concert tonight – Beethoven and Brahms, the German Requiem.  I looked up where it was and it was so close, just five minutes drive away.  I’m particularly interested in the Brahms piece because I know the aria, and of course it inspired me to work on it again and get a recording of it.  I don’t think you would have been impressed with the choir.  A few what you would have called ‘foghorn’ voices rather dominated, and the Brahms fell apart a bit, it’s very difficult.

First time I’ve been to a classical concert without you.  I’ve avoided classical music because it makes me think of your interest and sensitivity.  Sometimes I hear a phrase on the piano, the sort of phrase that elicits emotions and speaks to the heart, and it seems unbearable.

I still can’t get my head round the shock of you being gone.  I sung in choirs for years, right from when I was in school and university, over 30 years ago.  It seems unreal that that experience is still open to me, I could go and do it again, when it seems like something I was doing a lifetime ago, before I met you even.  How can it be that me and choirs still exist, and yet you’re not around any more?  All the time there’s this sort of feeling that two and two is adding up to five – something’s gone all wrong, you can’t be dead, not my dear, sweet, emotional, caring, loving, treasured John.

I noticed tomorrow night there’s a concert of Mahler No 8 – symphony of a thousand.  You would have liked that.  I couldn’t bear it.

Poignant words from the German Requiem:

Lord, make me to know

that the measure of my days is set,

that my life hath an ending,

and I must go hence.

AND

Blessed are the dead

which in the Lord are sleeping from henceforth,

they may rest now from all their labours;

their works shall follow after them.

Rest from your labours, Dear John.