Normally during this time of year, sefirat haomer, an orthodox Jew would not be listening to music yet I find myself sitting here listening to some of my favourites.  Yes we asked a shaila to our Rav and he said that for this year if I find it relaxing not only that I can but that I should.  My question, and I guess this follows from my post the other day about songs I learned in NCSY, what is it about music that can take such instant control of my emotions.  Even a random song with a decent tempo can almost instantly make me feel better.

I have often if it is just a "me-thing" that music has always played such a huge roll in my life.   As a child I remember sitting on my Zaidy's lap at the shabbat table singing all of benching and alternating between loving and hating having to do it.  I remember years of piano lessons where I hated my teacher but loved how the finished pieces sounded.  I remember making some of my best friends singing in choirs.  Participating in school and shul plays.  Writing my own music.  Putting my own lyrics to old tunes.  Putting new tunes to old lyrics.  I remember looking on in awe as my uncles played their guitars, and seemingly know how to play any song off the top of their heads.  I remember listening in awe as my Zaidy really could play anything in the world on any instrument you handed him after hearing it once.

For as long as I can remember my life has had a sound track.  Like any good musical, certain pieces kept coming back to tell you what was coming.  A tune I listened to all the time when dealing with infertility I only heard again the week I found out I was  pregnant with Gabbi.  I listened to it throughout my pregnancy.  Then it was on the cd that came with the pregnancy loss package from Atime.

Other songs I remember dancing to at camp, then at NCSY, then at our wedding.  I remember learning songs in preschool then watching my Channah come home having learned the same ones.  I remember singing ani maamin at a kumsitz on tisha b'av, then in a gas chamber, than most recently while crying at my piano and trying to convince myself that I really do still believe.

I can still remember my song from when I was a dreidle in my nursey school play.  I also remember the latkas part and even the candles.  I remember every uncle moishe song I learned then, and loved hearing them when I bought the discs for Channah.  I can still sing along every word to the all of the marvelous middos machine tapes.  And Disney- give me any movie cartoon or live action and I can probably sing you any song in it.

Hell I even remember the "Indian Rain Dance" my Zaidy taught me and the "Swahili" song about a boy getting eaten by a chicken that I learned at camp.  Theme songs, camp songs, school songs- in my head I have songs representing everything from star trek to ontario place.

But I have no song in my heart for Gabbi.  I know of now song in my repetoir that calls to mind "dead baby".  Maybe that is part of what I need to find.  A song that will fill the part of my heart meant for my Gabbi with a happy memory.  Maybe a happier song in my heart for her will help be the initial graft that will let my soul start to heal.  I am wracking my brain for one.  Maybe something I heard at a show while I was pregnant, or something on my ipod while I was at having monitoring done.  No matter how hard I try I come up blank- or worse yet with sad songs that went through my head after that fateful morning.

I remember the first time I finally heard Channah cry after being on a ventilator for 3 days and thinking it was the most beautiful sound in the world.  Unlike almost everything else in my life, Gabbi has left no happy song in my head.  No joyous noise to God and no part in a play to remember.  She is the silence that I hear when nothing else is playing.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I used to believe that if you sat in an open field, with no noises anywhere, and you slowed your breathing to keep time with the wind, what you would hear would be the music of the universe.  The music that was made up of all of God's creation harmonizing with each other as each sung their own song of praises to God.

Now I know better.  What I thought was the song of the universe is really the silence of a God who does not want to listen to prayer and who turns his back on those who beg the most.  It is the silence of children never born and accomplishments never reached,  Prisoners never rescued and abuse never stopped.  It is the silence  that the universe uses to cover that which it does not want you to hear.  That which it does not want you to know.  That which it wants you to forget.

Well Damnit I am not going to forget her.  I am not going to let her lie in silence.  I will hear my Gabbi in the sound of the waves.  I will hear her as the tides roll in and as water rushes across the sand.  I will hear her in the roar of Niagara Falls and in the gentle falling of the rain.  She is the noise that will give life to the universe.  The silence will not hide my Gabbi from the universe.  She will be the music of forever.