Last Night On Earth (First Day In My Heart)
By Tweaklab on January 7, 2024 11:37 pm
Well, what a way to start Weekly Beats 2024... since May 2023 my mother had been struggling with heart complications. After several hospital visits between May and December, she was scheduled for a quadruple bypass after suffering a cardiac event a week prior. My mum never made it out of the coma.
She died on the 19th of December, I was there with my dad and eldest sister the night before she passed, it was ultimately the best of a worst situation. If she had not gone peacefully during the night, we would of been facing the decision of turning off her support the next day, knowing already she would have any severity of brain damage, would be losing a leg from balloon pumps etc... she would have gone straight to a nursing home which both her and my dad would of hated. I shared what I felt were my final words with her the night before leaving the ICU, and the last thing I said to her was "This is all down to you now, mum. They can't do anything more for you. You need to kick some ass tonight, or you aren't leaving this hospital. I love you, the girls and I all love you." My wife feels mum heard me, and did the ultimate power move by saving us the decision of having to turn off her support the next day, she saved dad the guilt, she kept her pride, it could also be a coincidence, but I like to think of it this way.
I had said the night before leaving the ICU, I don't want to go back in there if I can avoid it... when my dad came to me at 2:30AM to tell me it had happened, and I drove him from the near by accommodation to see mum, I was relieved that we had been spared what would of been coming later that day. My dad was ready to leave after saying good bye to his wife of 60 years within 5 minutes, I pressed him to stay, stating "this is it. you do understand that, right?" and we ended up sitting by mum's side for 90 minutes talking about our holidays and funny memories. It now felt soothing being in that room, all the machines were gone, it was quiet and peaceful...
2 days after mum died, it would of been her 78th birthday - I picked up the guitar she had given me which belonged to her late brother, hence the guitar is named "Uncle Barry" in this house 
and I started playing it 10 minutes before midnight to bring in her birthday, I came up with the opening riff by around 12:10 so called it a success for Weekly Beats Week 1. That similar comfort I felt in the ICU room at 3am, I felt not long after recording this guitar riff. I started loading the dish washer and all of a sudden felt like I should go outside to look at the night sky, I ended up closing my eyes and felt a breeze all around me, a protective sort of energy. I opened my eyes and saw it was a calm, still night, no leaves moving on the trees, the trampoline netting was also still as can be.
It could have just been what it was what raw empathy feels like, my mum and I had our differences over the years and had a complicated relationship but I feel as though I witnessed in those moments mum's "true" energy, released from her emotionally scarred earthly body which had suffered trauma and loss in her younger years.
I'm typically not a very spiritual person but I definitely experienced some feelings whether they came purely from within me or not, they haven't come by since the 21st of December.
I wanted to do more lyrics but when I recorded these it kind of captured how grief tends to be when you lose a parent... it's a bit all over the place that said, I'm doing great, I've found a lot of comfort in the fact we were spared the hard decisions and that mum didn't know anything beyond when she went under 3 days prior. Her last concern was that her lipstick was in the ICU ward for when she came out of surgery, typical mum!
"Tonight could be your last night on earth... today will be your first day in my heart."
The thing that pulled me to make it a Moby style track - when I got my license, my mum enjoyed the fact that I had Moby "Play" and "18" in the car.
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)
