I sometimes get accused of singing a few dirge like tunes, and one that can certainly qualify for that category is a Negro spiritual entitled, “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.” Of course, the words refer to children who were sold away from their parents to other plantations and how they must have felt.
The song is plaintive and rendered in a slow manner. It’s the kind of tune that sticks in your brain, only to keep replaying itself. I’d made a stab at recording it a while back, but was not very satisfied with the rendition, so today, I recorded it again. Click here to go directly to the song.
Music is such a powerful point of connection to history. Sometimes, just sometimes, a song can connect with one’s personal history. I am a “motherless child,” my ninety-two year old mother having passed away a year ago. Before that, I’d lost her to dementia, and old age. When one is getting ready to die, he or she becomes detached from the world and from loved ones. Maybe this makes it easier to go on that last, lonely journey.
So, when I sing that song, it is heartfelt, from its historical context, and from experiences along my own personal life’s path.
At some point, we inculcate all we’ve learned about nurturing and begin to be caretakers to others. The lessons we have learned by the time we reach middle age have been hard, but we are survivors, a fact that many others can’t claim.
It’s alright to set aside a few moments, now and then, to be sad about the past…and think of things we could have done and didn’t, things we wish we had accomplished, and tasks we left to another day, but that day never came.
At some point, we who are adult women must become our own mothers, and our own point of reference, and then, a resource for others. In that way, our mothers will remain with us, even though they rest on God’s golden shore.
A tearful Pat
