My sister-in-law, Jo, created this card for me. She and my brother always remember Jason’s birthday.

Link to a slideshow with a new acoustic recording:

Links to lyrics, stories, recordings and performances for this song: EVERY SEASON

It is Memorial Day weekend. For me, it is definitely a time of memorializing; two days ago was the fourth anniversary of my father’s death and today is Jason’s birthday.

Jason died in 1992 at the age of five. Today he would have been 29 years old if he had lived.

I wouldn’t say I am in a wonderful place at the moment (last week I had a bad reaction to an eye treatment that was supposed to help me). But despite that, I am truly inspired because I have been writing a new song.

Despite the pain in my eyes and poignant memories of my father and Jason, last week I began writing lyrics for a song that I have tentatively named “The Key.”

It’s very unusual for me to write lyrics before composing chords and melodies, but I am open to writing a song in any way where it reveals itself. After a week, the chords are already in place as I continue to refine the lyrics. The melody is very complex and not yet set for me. The song will be named “The Key.”

This morning, I had a sweet revelation about how the new song that came to uplift me has a connection to my older song named “Every Season.”

Every Season holds a spot in my song garden of being the very first new song that I composed as an older woman. Before that, I had 30 songs written as a young girl and a lapse of thirty years in between.

Because Jason died in the fall, autumn is the season that most often comes to mind related to his death. But springtime carries a different kind of heartache because of his birthday at the end of May. Every year starting in April, I feel memories resurfacing as the season changes from spring to summer.

This holiday weekend carries many memories: birthday parties during the five years that Jason lived . . . memories with other special people in my life who are no longer here . . . and I remember closely sharing everything with my parents who are gone.

These are two story covers I created using autumn imagery.

This watercolor I painted in college, became the background for a memorial that hung at Jason’s Preschool for many years.

This song cover for “Every Season” shows springtime because I really feel this song around his birthday.

My songs are a musical of my life; it makes perfect sense that they build upon one another as life reveals lessons for me with every twist and turn.

When I wrote “Every Season” in 2011, it helped me to express my lingering sadness. My line of “my sadness will always be” is still true for me.

Saying that I’ve “healed” from deep grief doesn’t mean I am not sad remembering the child I loved who died.

I am grateful that I no longer carry the intense pain I lived with during my early years of grief. I never believed I’d ever feel joy again – but I did. That was a huge achievement for me after suffering such a terrible loss. It is the reason I am able to believe that I’ve healed.

A few weeks ago when I wrote my blog story IMPRISONED BY GRIEF AND MY KEY, I had no idea that it was going to become a song.

On Every Season, I have two lines that lead to the profound message of my song “The Key.” They are: “you always return” and “you come back to me.”

Every Season set the stage for my amazing revelation related to exiting the “prison of grief” that I lived in for decades.

I left that dismal place because I found a key. I am so grateful he came back to give me that key!

© 2016 by Judy Unger and http://www.myjourneysinsight.com. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Judy Unger with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.