Singing Again

Reclaiming my voice at a grief retreat while my son prepares to leave

Twenty-eight of us gathered in a circle to witness each other’s losses during a weekend-long grief retreat. I’d intended to honor the ambiguous grief of launching my only child into the world, celebrating his graduation, and sending him off to college. A celebration and a loss all wrapped into one weird and exciting transition.

What I didn’t realize until our last large circle share on Sunday morning was that I’d also been grieving lost parts of myself, ones I hadn’t thought of in years. Many years ago, during the weekly Catholic church service our family attended religiously (pun intended) my brother kindly leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Maggie I don’t think you should sing”. His honed ear and practiced voice were beautiful and deciphering. I trusted his trained musical theatre knowledge, knowing he was offering helpful guidance to his big sister. What he didn’t intend was that whisper taught me that my voice was something to hide.

I didn’t stop singing, but I stopped allowing myself to be heard as the only voice. I sing in the car, quietly if I’m not alone, loudly if I’m alone at home in the kitchen or dancing in the living room. I will not sing in church, which is not a big deal anymore since I no longer attend church. I admire and envy people who jump up to sing karaoke, not caring at all whether they’re on key.

On Sunday, after the weekend of joining the crowd in singing simple songs, the kind where harmony doesn’t matter and nobody’s offering corrections, the room felt safe in a way I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I felt surprisingly inspired to share the lullaby I’d made up for my son when he was a baby.

He was maybe eleven months old, lying in his pack and play after we’d already read books, after I’d already nursed him and put him to bed. He couldn’t fall asleep. I’d sung all the songs I knew, the gentle melodies I’d collected over the years. I’d run out, so I made one up.

The melody came first, simple and repetitive, the kind of tune you could hum in the dark without thinking. Then the words:

Little baby Ave, gonna go to sleep
Gonna close his eyes and go to his dreams
And when he goes to sleep, he’s gonna know that I love him
Gonna take that love with him to his dreams

I sang it to him hundreds of times - as a baby, into his childhood, whenever he needed soothing, or I needed to feel connected to the tenderness between us. (You can hear me sing the lullaby if you press play on “article voiceover” above the photo at the top of this article.)

On Sunday night, when I returned home from the retreat, I sang it to him again. He’s seventeen now, almost eighteen, weeks away from graduating. A smile slowly moved across his face, he leaned back in his chair, and said he remembered every word.

At the retreat, I told the circle the story of the lullaby, about making it up on a night when I’d run out of songs, about how my brother’s words had silenced me decades ago, and about how I haven’t sung in front of people since.

Then I sang it.

My voice shook. I was on the edge of tears the whole time, but I got through it. Every word, every note of that simple, imperfect melody.

It felt euphoric, a full-body release, that rush of energy moving through every cell, that sense of something long-held finally being allowed to exist in the world. My voice cracked, my breath was unsteady, and I’m sure I wasn’t on pitch. None of that mattered.

What mattered was that I created something for my son when he was small and needed me. And now, as he’s preparing to leave, as I’m processing the end of this phase of motherhood, I sang that song - MY song, the one I created - to a room full of strangers who held space for my grief and my love and my shaking voice.

It was a reclamation, taking back what my brother’s words had stolen.

It was also letting go. Offering this private lullaby that belonged to the two of us, to our late nights and early mornings, to the years when his body was small enough to hold, out into the world as evidence of how I loved him.

I asked the group to take a breath with me, and on the exhale to sing his name: “Ahhh-vaaah”.

I anticipate that the space he will leave when he goes to college will be filled with painting and writing, my current go-to creative practices, but first, I need to sing. I need to use my voice - the creative voice that’s been silenced since childhood - to mark this threshold.

He’s not a baby anymore. Soon he’ll be dreaming in a dorm room hundreds of miles away, taking my love with him wherever he goes.

And I’ll still be here, learning to sing.

PS. You can hear me sing the lullaby at the top of this article!