Their Song, Once a Decade

My parents' song was an obscure one — a B-side waltz from the year they met, never on any station's rotation. In fifty-one years of marriage I heard it on the radio maybe twice, and both times my parents went silent and held hands like teenagers, embarrassed at being caught by the universe.

My father died first, in a hospital ward with a communal radio down the corridor playing easy-listening filler. My mother was holding his hand. In the minute he left — and I am precise about this because the nurse was noting the time — the corridor radio finished an advert and, with no introduction, played the waltz. My mother didn't cry until then. The nurse, who knew nothing of its meaning, later admitted the station wasn't one that played 'anything that old.'

We told that story for nine years as our family's one brush with the beyond. My mother would pat the air and say, 'He always was a show-off with a budget.'