I Guess It’s Time I Started Playing Again

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from OLPS asking if I could play for a funeral the coming Monday morning. This wasn’t the first time. I’d been asked before. Sometimes the Mass timing would clash with my classes. Other times I’d already made plans or had committed to other appointments and would have to turn them down.

On this occasion I was available. But I was oh so reluctant to agree. It was, after all, a Monday morning – my ONE off-day in the week. And in the morning too! I said I would check and call them back to confirm. Then I logged into Facebook. Which is where I spend my free time *heh*.

Glaring at me from the newsfeed page : a status update from an ex-boyfriend / current friend and neighbour giving details of his late father’s wake. 

Ah. This is the funeral I’ve been asked to play for on Monday. I called them back and said yes.

After the mass I got a call from an old choir member friend – Can you play for a funeral at Divine Mercy? I’ll ask the person in charge of coordinating it to call you? It’s this Friday. 

What the heck, I thought. I may as well. I’d forgotten what it feels like to play for Mass. And there is a strange satisfaction in playing for a funeral - as if having music made it less tragic and miserable somehow. Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. It’s just a feeling I have.

So after I got the call giving me the details for Friday’s Mass and organising the forwarding of music scores etc. I hung up feeling rather pleased with myself. 

I later found out that they were cousins - the two gentlemen whose funerals I played for. Wow. What are the odds of that happening?

After both Masses the coordinators of the respective churches asked if they could contact me for future er…  engagements  since I was available on weekdays and most of the other organists on the list weren’t. Yes I said. I figured it took a friend’s father’s (and uncle’s) passing to get me sitting on that organ stool again. So maybe He was trying to tell me something. Mainly that I hadn’t played for so many years that it was time I did something about it. 

And so this is me officially getting back into the saddle. I’ve got all this music in me, I reckon I should give back in His service.