Songs For Isaac

I think I want to try to keep the blog going although how that might work in reality I don't know. It's useful to have a distraction and something to focus on and writing some of this stuff down helps me.

There's all sorts of things to organise now. Part of last week was taken up with the bureaucracy that takes place following a death which you don't consider until it happens- the registrar, death certificate, funeral director, informing various government agencies (Isaac was on Universal Credit and received Disability Living Allowance. Lou received Carers Allowance. These need to be stopped. Who wants to be overpaid and then involved in having to deal with government departments about that kind of thing?). So maybe coming on here and writing about other things, but likely still to be about Isaac, will help. 

Isaac's deafness meant he wasn't much bothered about music but there are songs indelibly linked to him for me. Two weeks ago I posted on his birthday and wrote about North Country Boy by The Charlatans, a song I haven't dared listen to yet. Last week Martin posted Do You Realise?? by The Flaming Lips, a song I love and even just hearing it in my head makes me well up. 

There are two songs closely linked to the first few days he had at home when he was born in November 1998. He spent the first two weeks of his life in hospital, rushed to Special Care immediately after birth and touch and go for a week. We finally got home at some point in December. Grandaddy's A.M. 180 had been one of the songs on a free CD that came with a music magazine I'd bought while he was in hospital. I hadn't played the CD and this was one of two songs that soundtracked those first few days at home with him

A.M. 180

Funny though how music and songs can shift- back in 1998 it was the keyboard refrain, the guitars and the nursery rhyme quality this song had that made it resonate with Isaac. Now that's he gone, the lyrics seem to take on a new significance. 

'We'll sit for days
And talk about things
Important to us like whatever
We'll defuse bombs
Walk marathons
And take on whatever together'

We'll Defuse Bombs And Run Marathons

I wrote a while back about Belle And Sebastian's This Is Just A Modern Rock Song and how it soundtracked the first couple of weeks of my son I.T.'s life and even further back about Teenage Fanclub's It's A Bad World and how it affected me during his diagnosis with Hurler's Disease and his bone marrow transplant. I heard this song at the weekend for the first time in years and for similar reasons it stopped me dead in my tracks. Grandaddy's A.M. 180 was on a free cd that came with the NME and I played the song loads during that period. It opens with a catchy, bleepy riff, followed by crunchy guitars and Jason Lyttle's fragile vocals and is wonderful from start to finish. I bought the album it came off (Under the Western Freeway) but nothing else on it hit me like this one.

AM 180