Hush, my Darling

I've already talked about Alan's love for The Lion King. In addition to The Circle of Life, there is one other song that stands out -- The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Timon and Pumbaa's version notwithstanding, it is actually the Tokens' version that we listened to the most. One day when Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we were driving somewhere, and Alan played this song over the car stereo on his phone.

We started to sing along, and this became a little tradition of ours. On several road trips afterward, we would come back to this song. It's not the easiest song to sing -- remember Alan's lack of a good falsetto. However, I can sing that high, and even got to the point where I could sing the soprano licks -- mind you, not well, but I can sing them.

When our cousin Edward visited us in the house this summer, he brought his own versions of the song. He apparently listened to them in the lab. On the way to the state fair in Des Moines, he played the Tokens version, the French language version, and even a version of Mbube, the song that it was based on. This sing-along was followed by a day of eating food on a stick (butter on a stick and bacon-wrapped pork ribs on a stick being highlights) and going on carnival rides. I had no idea it would be the last one.

What do you do with "our things" when there is no "us" any more? Alan and I had so many little traditions, inside jokes, topics of interest that the two of us would talk to only each other about. Isabelle told me that when her father died, she felt like there was a part of her that disappeared, the part that only existed with him. It took her a long time to realize that part of her was still there. I hope I find that part of me some day.

The Last Song

The last song I sang to Alan was, embarrassingly, Idiot Boyfriend from SNL way back when (song starts at about 1:13).

It was on a mixed CD that Laura Winterstein had made me to play in my Aquafresh-colored Saturn, and Alan and I loved to goof around and play it while I was driving. It came up as we were driving back from a comedy show -- definitely more on that later. I think I mentioned something that Jimmy Fallon had done on the Tonight Show recently. He told me he followed the Tonight Show pretty closely. He liked Jimmy's funny little skits, and especially liked the musical ones. He was thinking more like this one, where Jimmy impersonates Neil Young, and sings Sexy and I Know It with Bruce Springsteen.

I find myself wondering who is going to put up with my horrible falsetto now. Sometimes, it was hard to tell if Alan was listening, mainly because of the processing delay it took him before he would respond. But, it was clear to those who knew him best that he was actually a great listener. I felt at ease around him, even when he was clearly not at ease. I think he could have that effect on people.