DW's Blog

The Archaic Mystery of Music

by DW Green — July 30, 2025

“Music, I realized that evening, is one of grief’s most generous companions.”

In that moment, as the notes pierced me to the core, I understood something profound. Music doesn’t just entertain—it archives us. It preserves not only the sound of an era, but the feeling of it. A single song can hold the essence of who we were when it first moved us, ready to awaken that younger self decades later.

That truth came rushing back to me at Sandy’s viewing last week. Sandy had been a cherished family friend for years. Life had pulled us in different directions, and I hadn’t seen her or her family for several years. But there had been a time when our lives intertwined regularly—holiday meals around crowded tables, birthday celebrations, anniversary toasts, graduation parties, and countless other gatherings that form the fabric of friendship.

Walking into the funeral home that evening, I expected the familiar weight of grief. What I found instead was something unexpected: joy.

Seeing Sandy’s family gathered together again stirred something deep within me—a symphony of emotions that I struggled to name. But it was Sandy’s daughter Jill who had orchestrated something truly remarkable. She had carefully curated a soundtrack that transformed that quiet viewing room into a time machine.

The music drifted through the space like old friends returning home—familiar voices from the 60s, 70s, and 80s that had once provided the soundtrack to our younger selves. Each song carried us back to different moments, different places, different versions of who we used to be. I could almost see Sandy dancing at one of those long-ago parties, laughing at a family barbecue, or humming along to the radio while preparing another of her legendary holiday feasts.

What struck me most was how these songs, decades removed from their heyday, still carried such power. In a room where we had gathered to say goodbye, music became the bridge between then and now, between memory and presence, between sorrow and celebration. The wide array of tunes, each a product of its own era, somehow wove together into a unified message of love, beauty, and happiness.

There’s something mysterious about music’s ability to transcend time and circumstance. Even surrounded by grief, even in the face of loss, those melodies reached into our hearts and reminded us not just of what we had lost, but of what we had been given. They transformed a room of mourners into a room of rememberers, each song a thread in the tapestry of Sandy’s life and the lives she had touched.

Music, I realized that evening, is one of grief’s most generous companions. It doesn’t try to erase the sadness or diminish the loss. Instead, it stands alongside sorrow and whispers reminders of joy. It soothes wounded hearts not by forgetting, but by remembering—remembering the laughter, the dancing, the shared moments that made a life worth celebrating.

As I left the viewing that night, one of those classic songs still echoing in my mind, I carried with me a new appreciation for music’s archaic power. In a world that often feels divided by time, distance, and circumstance, music remains our most reliable connector—linking past to present, heart to heart, memory to hope.

Sandy’s viewing became, unexpectedly, a joyful evening. Not because we forgot our sadness, but because music helped us remember that love, beauty, and happiness are stronger than loss. In the end, perhaps that’s music’s greatest mystery of all.