A PLAYLIST FOR KITTY

In trying to decide how best to approach Kitty's memorial service this past Saturday, I felt that the best way was to focus on the songs she loved and why she loved them, as well as the songs that explained so much of her essence and personality.  It took a lot of doing but I finally narrowed the list down to a dozen songs.  Jessie then taped eleven of them to be played at the service.  A number of people would recount their memories of her in between each selection.  Because the small church where we held the service was not air-conditioned and because it gets hot in mid-July, we did not have time to include all the songs we wanted to play.  For those who knew her and for those who never had the chance to kn ow the absolute miracle that was my wife, here is the playlist, with apologies because many of the YouTube selections have irritating (albeit brief) advertisements before the songs.

• "How Great Thou Art"  One of her favorite hymns.  There is an "awesome wonder" in the words.  This was the only song we did not previously record; Gina, the pianist at the church, did a magnificent job singing it.  This version is by Joshua Aaron and Aaron Shust:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBP8Nhb4bHU

• "Wings of a Dove"  One of Kitty's favorite spirituals and she would find herself singing or humming it at random times.  I've included it because of its underlying message and because Ferlin Husky's song just made her happy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMtL_kqUxN4

• "Jolene"  Kitty enjoyed country-western music but she preferred rock and roll, musical theater, and folk music.   Yet she would always make time to listen to Dolly Parton.  Back in the early days of our marriage, she would listen to THE PORTER WAGONER SHOW on Manchester, new Hampshire's Channel 9 because Dolly Parton was a regular.  Kitty was in awe of this tiny girl with the big blonde wig, the voice of an angel, and the biggest...(here, Kitty would thrust out her hands)...fingernails she had ever seen.  How Dolly Parton could play the guitar with those fingernails is a mystery for the ages.  Fast forawrd a number years, and we were driving down to Walt Disney World.  At a gas station in North Carolina, she bought a tape of Dolly Parton songs that included "Jolene."  I have no idea what other songs were on that tape because she just kept playing "Jolene" over and over again, all the way to Orlando.  She swore that if Christina had been born a month later she would have been named Jolene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0eeSoU35wM

• "Pack Up Your Sorrows"  Some of Kitty's college friends played this song as we were exiting the chapel when we got married.  It was my promise to her and her promise to me.  Richard and Mimi Farina perhaps sang it best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSeWvVdkKc

• "Dance Me to the End of Love"  Grow old with me; the best is yet to be.  This Leonard Cohen song encapsulated that feeling perfectly.  One of Kitty's extra-special favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGorjBVag0I

• "Forever Young"  Kitty had a special bond and love with kids.  She graduated with a teaching degree at a time when here were no teching jobs available, but shortly after we were married, she got a job with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services, helping to implement a pilot program designed to close many of the state's reformatories.  We would take these kids into our home and work with the court systems, the schools, and the kids' parents to eventually reunite them in a healthier home environment.  We had far, far more successes than failures.  After our daughters had gone off to college, we became therapeutic foster parents and were able to work with some amazing children whose backstories could break your heart.  While our girls were in high school, our home became a safe haven for many of their friends who were having trouble at their own homes.  Kitty had a costume box filled with prom dresses she had picked up over the years; she would alter these dresses for the girls' friends come prom season.  Birthday parties were always special because Kitty made them so.  During one very bad blizzard we ended up with about sixteen kids who were in the area for a statewide high school music concert spending the night at our house; the following day when the roads were clear and the students were able to go to their actual assigned host families, all but one elected to stay with us.  Occasionaly we'd end up with foreign students and Kitty was always able to put them at ease.  Her secret, I believe, was that she never talked down to kids, but met them on their own terms.  She tried to treat everyone with the respect they deserved.  Children, especially our own two girls and our grandkids, were important to her.  Is it any wonder that the safety, the potential, and the love that chilkdren needed to express were important to her.  Pete Seeger, who recorded this Bob Dylan song when he was 89, encapsulated Kitty's hopes for the upcoming generations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezyd40kJFq0

• "My Lady's a Wild Flying Dove"  I strongly suspect that Kitty would not have minded having Tom Paxton as her secret husband, but alas for Kitty and luckily for me, Paxton's one true love was his beloved wife Midge.   I cannot count the times we heard Tom Paxton in concert, with Kitty holding my hand and her head on my shoulder.  Paxton wrote this song as an engagement gift for his wife.  It happens to encapuslate how I felt (and still feel) about Kitty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=royRfS0uI1M

• "Julian of Norwich"  Julian of Norwich was an English anchoress who live in the later 14th and early 15th centuries.  It was not a pleasant time to be alive:  the Black Death, the Peasant's Revolt, and the supression of certain proto-Protestant religions made life difficult, to say the least.  When  she was about 30 years old, Julian became terribly ill, enough so tht she wa given the last ritesof the church.  One version has it that she had a number of visions of Jesus; another that she had them of the Virgin Mary.  The one I am familaiir with had Julien ask the Virgin Mary why there was so much suffering in the world.  The simple answer given was, Fear not.  All shall be well again.  That message resonated with Kitty throughout her adult life.  Here's Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, and Ed Trickett, with Ann Mayo /Muir taking the lead vocal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqssaNRv9Ko

• "Danny Boy"  A beautiful song, but this version was Kitty's favorite.  I think this was the first time that version was ever played in a church.  Oh, Danny.  Here's The Leprechaun Brothers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCbuRA_D3KU

• ""As Time Goes By"  Another song played at our wedding.  Dooley Wilson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22CiKMPpaY

• "For Bobbi (For Baby)"  If John Denver had never written another song, his place in the music pantheon would still be ensured.  This version has Mary Travers signing to her granddaughter.  The palpable love she displays also contains the essence of Kitty.  After we played this at the memorail service Saturday, a number of people told me how special this version was to them.  Love is universal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZdiI7nPvC4

• "Red Is the Rose"  We closed with this song.  Kitty loved red roses.  My niece Julie had brought her beautiful two-month-old baby, Lily, to the service (Lily behaved with all the grace and poise she had displayed throughout her teo months of life),  Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows, fair is the lily of the valley, clear is the water that flows from the Boyne, but my love is fairer than any:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KPfB_PRYlY

And my love was, and remains, fairer than any.