If I Could Save Time In a Bottle …

I am not one to dwell on regrets; the what-could-have-beens; the if-onlys. But there is one major regret that haunts me to my core. It’s music; music from our past; George’s past and my past and it’s a regret because Marilyn loved music. She heard the words and they meant something to her. But Music was just recognizable noise to George that reminded him of places and times in the past. If you asked him to recite more that the refrain he couldn’t and often as not, he couldn’t recognize more than a few chords.

Marilyn on the other hand listened to music much of each day. Usually she worked with headphones on as she plied her artful touch to the ceramic crowns and bridges her job required. I don’t know exactly why she seldom commented on what she was listening to. Maybe it was because she knew that her handsome prince wouldn’t respond with more than a grunt to anything she had to say about anything she was listening to.

When she died she left behind a treasure of more than 300 LP albums that she had purchased over the years and they were all in pristine condition. There was no specific genre that could be assigned to the overall collection, a fact that spoke volumes to the wide ranging taste that she had in music. Albums from Glenn Yarborough to Barbara Streisand, Boston Pops Orchestra to Randy Travis, Dan Seals to Gregorian Chants, Eugene Ormandy leading the Boston Pops in Wagner to Willie Nelson, Cheryl Crowe to Hank Williams, the list of variables could go on infinitum.

When the house in Chandler was being built she made sure that her handsome prince wired every single room in the house and the back patio for sound. How this passion for music and the meanings behind all those lyrics never rubbed off on George is beyond me, but it didn’t. It’s not that he was unaware of the importance of music in her life because he most certainly was; to the point that the night she passed away the music of Peter Gunn was echoing through the house.

What is haunting me now is the fact that I now hear virtually every single word of the songs from the past that I hear on KOOL Radio.I find myself thinking, wishing that I could turn back the clock and play those love songs to her. But I can’t can I? At this moment I can feel her presence and sense a tender expression of love from her. Is it that I’m crazy or just still so in love with her that these emotions create an imaginary presence that comforts me in spite of the companion tears? As long as I can hear the music she’s still alive.

Then there’s the other presence that accompanies much of the older music like Andy Williams’ “Can’t Get Used to Losing You.” That presence is George. The music that springs from his time; the time before “me”. That music from the past that makes we wish “we”, George and I could sing love songs to her. It would be a major Broadway or Las Vegas production, with a full orchestra, spot lights on the three of us.

And now in the process of writing this and listening to the songs from our past I stop writing and look up through the tears toward the ceiling and scream, “God, how I miss you.” Then the next song on the CD is Perry Como singing “Some Enchanted Evening” and I’m taken back to that night on the dance floor at Francisco’s Cantina y Ristorante in Durango when I/we realized that at last we were totally and completely lost in a love that had only been a dream until that moment.

It is such bitter sweet memories and the music that evokes them which makes me wish at times that I was still oblivious to the words and “ … could save time in a bottle.”