Shortly after sunrise one Tuesday last month, tragedy visited my back yard. A yelp and a crash broke the early-morning silence and led my husband to discover our upstairs neighbor unconscious in the garden.
She'd fallen through the railing of the back stairs landing to the concrete below. Horrible doesn't begin to capture the scene and her death several days later tore at my soul. The loss her family must have felt and still be feeling is simply unimaginable.
Life is so tenuous, hanging by a gossamer thread. You're here and then you're gone.
The day of the accident, after the paramedics, police and village inspectors had left, I walked out the front door (so as not to walk by the spot where she'd fallen), walked around the block to our garage, and got in my car to drive to the bank.
In hindsight, I'm certain I was in shock. Shaken. Utterly broken. I turned on the radio dial to Chicago's WXRT as I drove and heard a familiar voice singing.
It was Joan Osborne, live in the studio, singing a song from her new album, "Little Wild One." The song she performed when I tuned in was called "Hallelujah in the City."
As I listened in stunned silence, I heard Joan sing:
In this crowded city,
I was so alone
Stranger to my own eyes
Heart without a home
Hallelujah.
I pulled the car over and wept.
Sometimes you hear precisely what your heart of hearts needs to hear in the way it needs to hear it at precisely the moment it needs to be heard.
When I regained temporary composure, I forgot all about the bank and drove straight to my neighborhood record shop, Val's Halla in Oak Park, to find "Little Wild One." There behind the register, where I've found her nearly every time I've walked through the door of her shop for 20 years, was Val Camilletti. Greeting me with her big Cheshire cat smile and a friendly hello, she fished out Joan's new CD from one of her many bins and we chatted for a while, catching up on village and political gossip.
I didn't tell her what had happened in the garden that morning. I just rested in her neighborly company and kindness. When I left 30 minutes later, I popped "Little Wild One" in the disc player and drove around for a while, thinking, praying, trying to breathe.
The third track on the album, "Cathedrals," written by the Baltimore band Jump Little Children, was a salve to my wounded spirit.
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
Having the specter of death hanging over my home -- the sacred space my husband and I have created together -- was like a psychic earthquake. But as I listened to the words of "Cathedrals," I thought about where my home actually is -- in this world and beyond. It is not a place, but a person. The city I live in is not a geographic location, but a community of friends that abides, no matter the circumstances, lovingly and patiently waiting for me to catch my breath.
I turned the car west and drove back to my home -- my husband -- who as waiting for me to hold him.
Music has a way of moving my spirit like nothing else. It's a companion in good times and bad, in joy and in deep, unthinkable sorrow.
That terribly sad day, my soul was buoyed not only by Val's warm spirit but by Joan's as well. If anyone had asked that day, I wouldn't have been able to articulate what kind of solace I needed. But it was there. These two remarkable women -- one I've known for years, the other I've "known" through her music alone -- met me where I was, holding space with open arms and hearts.
It reminds me of something one of my favorite authors -- Frederick Buechner -- once said, "It is no wonder that just the touch of another human being at a dark time can be enough to save the day."
If you haven't heard "Little Wild One" yet, please stop what you're doing and go get it, preferably from your local independent music shop. Play it while you're making Thanksgiving dinner. Stuff it in the Christmas stocking of someone you can't live without.
Best known for her hit single in the 90s, "What if God Was One of Us," Joan's music defies category. She has toured with the Grateful Dead (her cover of their classic, "Brokedown Palace" is glorious) and the Dixie Chicks; she performs her own music as often as she does cover tunes.
The thread that runs through all of her music, whatever the genre, is a spiritual depth that is unmatched. "Little Wild One" is her ode to post-9/11 New York City, the global village where Joan, a Kentucky native, has lived for more than two decades.
Many of the songs, which range thematically from the sacred to the sublime -- the woman can write a love song like no other -- are about New York, but they could be about anywhere, any city, any community of friends. I think that's what touched me so deeply about this magnificent album.
The penultimate song on the album, "Light of this World," sums her ode to community with ethereal eloquence.
Sometimes I feel this Earth is not my home
And everything I know is an illusion
So many dreams have been broken at the seams
So much time is wasted in confusion
But I don't know if pain makes me stronger
But if you're beside me tonight
Just as long as I'm in this world
I'll be, I'll be a light of this world.