Grandma's house

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Requiem, K626; Vienna Philharmoniker; Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsoperchor; Sir Georg Solti, conducting

Grandma A. lived in town. She had a big house that sat on two lots just around the corner from the main street. Make no mistake, Grandma loved to garden. Most of her property, the parts that weren’t house, garage, driveway and boulevard, were gardens. She had a vegetable garden on the east part of her little acreage, but most everywhere else comprised of flowers.

All kinds of flowers. Tall flowers, short flowers, skinny flowers, fat flowers, pretty flowers, ugly flowers. Flowers that peeped up at you. Flowers that scowled down at you. Flowers that gathered around the wishing well. Flowers that peered inside the window to see what the inside flowers were doing. Flowers that guarded her garage door. And flowers that saluted you as you walked up to her front door.

When you walked through her back door, into the house, you could see her gardening clothes, her gardening tools and her gardening hat. The rest of the house contained vestiges of a long life. Old pictures in old frames. Plates that stood on a shelf just below the ceiling around her dining room. Lamps with outlandish lampshades. Photograph books. Quilts. Antiques here. Antiques there. And always, always, always, a little knitting, sewing or craft project.

For a while, it seemed that Mom and Dad had to attend a series of funerals, and whenever they did, they would drop my sister D. and I off at Grandma’s. And we didn’t mind a bit. On any given day of the year, inside or outside, a grandchild could wander through a wonderland of pathways and pictures, plants and plates, pansies and prairie grass.

Eventually, D. and I went to our first funeral. I think it was for our second cousin M. who died at a very young age in a car accident. The family was Catholic and Dad informed us that the ceremony included a Mass and that this “may take a while” and to “please, be on our best behavior.” Accompanying the parents to a funeral for the first time gave me the impression of some final rite of passage from the tween years to the teen years.

Some years later, in my Music Theory class in high school, I learned about the Requiem Mass or the Missa pro defunctis (Mass for the deceased). It is a liturgical service of the Roman Catholic Church celebrated by a presiding priest for the repose of the soul of a particular deceased person. Or, as I understand it, persons. The Requiem has inspired many composers to pen music for this, as you can imagine, emotionally charged ceremony.

I have two Requiems on my iPod. One is by Johannes Brahms whose German Requiem I mentioned before. The text in his Requiem isn’t liturgical. He chose scripture portions that he figured would bring comfort to one who grieves.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem occupies a place of honor on my iPod. It does follow the Roman Catholic liturgy. As a protestant, the liturgy, in its Latin form, doesn’t elicit much of a personal spiritual response. But on this Good Friday, the music of this popular and respected work penned by this “down to earth” composer soothes the soul and honors the human aspect of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Credits: To Grandma A., for marching to the beat of a different drummer. We loved the beak bears!