Missing You...on Memorial Day

“Now this is what we call a happy sad song,” the music professional [Jonathan] said in an affirmative tone as we sat in the prestigious Dark Horse Recording Studio in Nashville, Tennessee. My song, Missin’ You, had just received a thumbs up, so it seemed. I was watching his body language as studiously as he was listening to my songs. Not only was I studying the craft of songwriting…I was learning to “read” my audience. I liked what I saw.

Jonathan making notes.

Jonathan had been called in by my new producer [Eric] to listen to all of the songs I had been writing — looking for gems. They were listening to my babies and I felt vulnerable. The songs that made the cut would go on my upcoming recording project.

As a newcomer to the Nashville culture, I was both eager and nervous. I gazed out the wall-length window above the ominous soundboard. The outside lush spring-green landscape was strikingly similar to that of my home state of Pennsylvania and it comforted me. 

I had a fair number of sad songs (without the happy) in my notebook. I hadn’t realized just how many until after Jonathan’s final wrap-up sentence of the day: “you seem to write a lot of songs about death.” I had heard that same assessment from Eric the day before. Two different individuals, independent of each other, had made the same observation. It was unsettling news to me. 

I had a feeling that this pattern wasn’t necessarily a good thing. We laughed when Eric said, “We can call you The Grateful Dead.” I didn’t know who that group was. I laughed as if I did.

I squirmed in my chair, silently wondering: how on earth could it be? I made a mental note. Someday I must figure out why I write so many songs about death… But in the present moment, I needed to focus. Therapy would have to wait. They were giving me a songwriting lesson about happy sad songs.

While their explanation was supposed to be educational, I simultaneously felt like I was receiving a verbal award of accomplishment for writing this particular song. After all, it was different than my other sad songs. It was “happy.” I had managed to write sad feelings in a happy way, though I had done it unknowingly. The professionals seemed to approve. 

My mind drifted back to the day I wrote the song…

I am 36 years old, sitting in my backyard on a metal folding chair, guitar in hand, experiencing my first birthday without my father. I am missing him. 

I look at the lovely purple lilacs in front of me. I breathe in their sweet fragrance. It’s the first year the blooms have made it past a hard freeze since we planted the bush over a decade ago. It was a birthday gift from my parents. My very own perennial bouquet of lilacs for annual birthdays. 

Mysteriously, the bush is choosing to bloom the first year after my father’s death. I receive it as a gift from him. Yet, there is a surge of grief accompanying the pleasantness of the moment. I strum my guitar as a lyric comes to mind. 

“Well we’ve seen another winter come and go…” 

I look at the lilacs again. 

“All the lilacs are blooming there’s no more snow…” 

I think back through the events leading up to his death. 

Less than two years earlier I released my very first recording project, Under The Big Blue Sky. Daddy was there for the release concert, supporting me. But not too long after that celebration, he began feeling ill. Months later, we found out why. He had cancer. 

I remember standing outside his hospital room trying to gain my composure. He too had just been given the news. I didn’t want him to see me cry.

Back in front of the lilac bush, I know what I want to say next. Lyrics flow effortlessly…

”But I miss you more than ever 
and the sayin’s not true
that time will heal 
‘cause I’ve been missin’ you.”

He was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma that summer and less than a year later, he was gone. In one short year, I witnessed the birth of my professional music career and the death of my father. Summer, fall, winter…

“Springtime reminds me of you
in the winter season
I’m thinking of you”

May 2021 marks the twentieth anniversary of Daddy’s death. Our last holiday together was Memorial Day. I should have known something was wrong when he could barely lift a piece of wood from the trunk of the car and carry it over to the BBQ pit. 

The morning after our family picnic, he started coughing up blood and died three days later on May 31, 2001. We were all there beside his bed, surrounding him, serenading him with hymns, including one of his favorites…Under His Wings.

This past week, knowing the 20th anniversary of his death approaches, I’ve been digging out my old photo albums — faded pictures of his youth, pets, his violin, weddings, births, reunions — snapshots of our family. Organizing them into a visual soundtrack to go with the song…

“and if time is a healer
then it’s moving pretty slow
‘cause I’ve seen another season
and I’m missin’ you.”

Click here to see the song. Or click the image below.

Beside the Barn

It was my first big trip to Nashville, Tennessee, as a songwriter, planning to record an album with a new producer I had met previously at a music conference. His name was Eric Copeland and he was president of Creative Soul Records. From the first time I met him and heard some of his artists perform their songs and share their heart, I knew it was a divine appointment. I made a mental note that the next time I needed a producer I would call him. That time had come.

Now, I was preparing to meet with Eric at a prestigious recording studio called Dark Horse Recording in Nashville. The plan was for him to listen through all the songs I had been writing and help me determine if I had any material that was worthy of recording.

Eric sat at a big recording console with his back to me as he listened through all my songs. As soon as the demo of the song "Beside the Barn" started playing, the tears began to trickle down my face. I hadn't expected any emotion that day, only nerves, so the tears took me by surprise. He turned around from the big studio console with all the fancy knobs and lights and was about to ask me if the song was a true story, but he stopped mid-sentence when he saw my glistening face. He simply nodded as if to say, "I see the answer to my question". He swung back around in his chair and nothing more was said until the song finished.

"Beside the Barn" was an immediate "yes" for the album. I still remember Eric saying, "Well THAT song will sell a CD for sure." But THAT seemed like a long way off.

At the end of the day, Eric made an observation that I wrote a lot of songs about death; something I had never noticed, ever. I went home pondering why. Though it certainly seems obvious to me now, at that point in my life I had no answer.

Working on songs at Dark Horse Recording with Eric Copeland.
Lots to think about!

The song went through many re-writes before we recorded it and some of those re-writes wrote the emotions right out of the song, so in the end, we went back to one of the original versions.

"Beside the Barn" is about this next story that has touched our family in a way that I'm not sure any other event in our lives ever did, from my point of view. At least, speaking for myself, it left an imprint so deep in my psyche that it showed up in many of my songs late into my 30's and 40's. It became apparent, from my writing, that I had an issue with death—and it's no wonder.

It's at this point we'll continue on with the story in my mother's own words.

"Nathan was born on October 7, 1964. He was a little clown and he made us all laugh, especially his baby sister, Frances. She would sit in her toddler chair, bouncing herself up and down with delight, as Nathan danced around in his 2-year old way, getting her to respond. Frances would put her head back and laugh and laugh! They were quite a pair.

Nathan C. Heisey October 7, 1964 - October 11, 1966

Just the weekend before the tragic day, we had gone to Ohio to visit Grandpa and Grandma Heisey (Henry P. and Lela Fern—Orville's folks). We had been planning to leave Nathan with friends and not take him along, but Brenda and Adriel put up such a fuss about it and said if Nathan wasn't going, they didn't want to go either. So Nathan went along. I was so glad we took him.

Brenda (Aspen), Orville (holding Nathan), Bertha (holding Frances) and Adriel.
(Doug was now in Africa, serving as a missionary.)

On the way driving home from Ohio, we had seen the results of a bad accident on the highway—there were people lying on the grassy banks, covered with sheets. That night, I had a dream or a vision, was I sleeping or awake? I saw plainly our two families—the Sollenberger and Heisey families in the basement of Air Hill church, waiting to be ushered upstairs for the seating at a funeral as was the custom...and I said in the dream—"That means there is someone in our family—Orville's and mine, that has died".

It was Tuesday, October 11, 1966, a few days after Nathan's 2nd birthday, later in the afternoon, and Nathan was tired (it had been a big weekend going to Ohio) and I should have put him to bed for a nap, but he wanted to go outside so badly. It was chilly, so I dressed him up in a couple of layers and he went out. He must have headed straight for the farm pond—he had recently discovered it, playing fetch-the-ball with his older siblings. It hadn't been very long at all but when I went to check on him, I couldn't find him. He was nowhere to be seen...

And then, I saw something in the water, floating.

My heart sank.

I could see his plaid flannel shirt—white and black and red.

I ran in and took him from the pond; carried him quickly down to the end of the lane. I thought maybe there was a chance we could revive him. I flagged down a car and asked them to hurry and get a doctor.

The doctor seemed to come fairly quickly.

We gave him artificial respiration.

But Nathan was gone.

They wanted to give me something to keep me calm but I wouldn't take anything.

They wanted me to get in the car and ride up the lane but I wouldn't get in.

I carried him in my arms, up the long lane to the house.

I wanted to carry him myself.

I needed to carry him.

We laid Nathan in the living room. When they asked me who we wanted for an undertaker, they were shocking words. I resisted allowing them to take my child saying, "you can't have him; his father is not even here!"

I wanted Orville to get home...didn't want to do anything else until he was there, but he was not reachable by phone as he had gone to Bucknell University for the day to a conference, and wouldn't be back until 8 or 9 o'clock.

Orville got there just in time before the undertaker took Nathan away."

Frances here:

I'm 52 years old and I still cry as I type this story.

I don't know if there was ever a time that mother told this story that we didn't all cry.

I guess that's how the story became so alive in my own heart and sank deep into the place from which I write songs. I can see now, as I look back in my songwriting, that every time I felt I needed a scenario in a song to express the dark side of life and how to deal with it, I went right to the topic of death to help me cope with my overwhelming sense of sadness that I seemed to live with, even as a believer in Jesus. The problem is, I wasn't really facing it head-on.

It wasn't until I went through some counseling that I realized how the story of not only Nathan's death, but all the deaths my mother would talk about (such as her first husband...and more deaths to come, as you'll see), would continually remind me that death is a part of life, but amplified in ways most children would never have to think about, because it happened so much in our family.

There's one line in the chorus of the song that is even more powerful now than I realized at the time I wrote it...

"Still my heart is where that home was."

Now I see, in part, the reason for my struggle. My heart could never quite leave that 'place' of mourning.

The pond beside the barn where Nathan drowned.

I have no video to point you to for this song. I've considered creating one with old photos of Nathan and the farm, but my producer (Eric) and I feel like the best way to capture this song is to go back to the farm and do a music video.  Plans are currently in motion for this to happen. For now, it is available on iTunes if you type in the title, "Beside The Barn".