Shortly after the death of her husband, a friend turned on her radio and heard “Smile though your heart is aching, smile even though it’s breaking…”

Smile is song from 1936 when Charlie Chaplin composed the music for his movie, Modern Times, though John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added the lyrics and title in 1954. It is now 2015 and this song is still being heard by those who need to hear it.

I’m including a piece from the Poetry section of my blog site to show how another song manifested itself shortly after my mother’s death. The poem tells the story.

ANN

“Who’s Sorry Now”
was her favorite song.
“You’ll be sorry when I’m dead and gone,”
she would bellow at her two girls for whatever reason.
Her life spanned fifty-nine years
of hard work and harder partying…
and then she died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
We were two sisters
detailing the aftermath of her death.
Sorting clothes, memorabilia, and personal papers,
we turned on the Telefunken stereo
to break the deadly silence of this once lively house.
WHO’S SORRY NOW
blared from the old set.
We physically jumped!
She was dead and gone, and she had been right:
we were sorry.
Ann was our mother,
and she was bellowing at us one more time…
from another realm.