The Music I Miss The Most

It’s been eight years since I’ve heard my daughter sing.

Ana, age 14, in September 2015 — Photo by Phil Mansfield.

My daughter Ana was an incredibly gifted singer and musician. Ana was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 when she was 11. Just under five years later, in March 2017, Ana died from her disease.

Ana left a legacy of music that, eight years after her death, is fading. It seems like only those of us who were closest to Ana — me, my husband, and my younger daughter — remember Ana’s voice. This is what I want to talk about in March, the month that Ana’s life ended. Right from the start, music lit Ana up.

As a toddler, music seemed to transfix her. Whether it was Baby Einstein videos with their classical soundtracks or her Kindermusik class with its bright, engaging songs, or Primus blaring loudly from the stereo — she loved all of it.

Ana‘s early childhood and elementary school years were filled with song. Her voice was soulful even at 5 years old. But Ana was shy, introverted, and easily embarrassed. These characteristics kept her from singing beyond the confines of our house. At least at first. She sang for us though — her family. She orchestrated concerts with her younger sister, the girls harmonizing songs they learned at school or (more likely) from shows like Backyardigans and Blue’s Clues.

I can’t carry a tune to save my life. My singing is so bad that when my girls were very little, they would cover my mouth with their hands and say, “Don’t sing, mommy.” Despite my own deficit of talent, I recognized that Ana had something special. It was a music teacher named Debbie who pointed out how astonishing her voice was. When Ana was 6, I hired Debbie to give Ana weekly singing lessons.

On the day of Ana’s first lesson, Debbie brought Ana into her cozy home-based music studio and closed the door. I waited anxiously at Debbie’s kitchen table, listening to traces of piano music and trying to hear Ana singing. Twenty minutes later, they both emerged smiling.

“Your child,” was all Debbie managed before tearing up. “She’s just incredible.”

“I knew it,” I said.

***

It’s been over eight years since I’ve heard Ana sing. Some of the best moments of my life were spent watching her onstage.

At first, Ana held her hands in front of her mouth when she sang. Her shyness was crippling. Debbie told me that during their lessons, Ana would turn around so Debbie couldn’t see her face. But Ana was determined. She wanted to perform on a stage, in front of an audience.

At 8, Ana sang for her small class of fellow third graders — a song called “Fireflies” by Owl City. She was too scared to sing alone, so she and a friend sang the song together. There was no stage involved for that first performance. They sang in the school’s cramped dance studio, while the rest of the class sat in a semi-circle on the floor around them. Ana stood ramrod straight, arms held stiffly at her sides. She sang the song perfectly, but her friend’s voice was louder.

She’d been disappointed about that. She wanted to be heard so badly. The following year, though terrified, she decided to perform solo. She sang Bette Midler’s “The Rose” at her school variety show. She was all alone on the stage in the school’s performing arts center.

Ana left a legacy of music that, eight years after her death, is fading. It seems like only those of us who were closest to Ana — me, my husband, and my younger daughter — remember Ana’s voice. This is what I want to talk about in March, the month that Ana’s life ended. Right from the start, music lit Ana up.

I picked the song for her because she wasn’t sure what to sing. She later regretted the choice, particularly when she joined a local music program called Rock Academy and was exposed to much cooler artists and bands.

But it all really took off — Ana’s spark, the magic of her voice, her love of performing—with that first tremulous performance of “The Rose.”

***

Ana attended the same tiny private school from first through eighth grades. The school held an annual variety show every spring and from about 2010 (give or take a year) through 2016, both my girls sang in this show. The accompanying band was a collection of parents who were also musicians. My husband played drums and Debbie, Ana’s singing teacher, played keyboards.

In the spring of 2012, Ana looked robust and healthy. In retrospect, she was already experiencing some symptoms from the tumor growing inside her belly when she sang Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain” for the spring show. It was one of the best performances of her life.

I took a halfway decent video of her performing the song. She is slightly more relaxed than in her previous two school performances. Her hands are folded at her waist because she was trying with all her might not to cover her mouth.

She sang beautifully that day. It’s hard to believe she was only 10. Her voice hadn’t yet found its full power. It turns out it never would. But I could hear the promise. I could hear the control. I wept that day, filled with more pride and wonder than I could contain. I still weep when I watch the video. Her voice is so familiar. It’s so close. It’s so completely alive.

The video is always over too soon and I’m left with nothing but silence. You might think that eight years is enough time to grieve. And maybe it is for most losses. But try to imagine all that time, all those many years, with nothing but silence in place of your child’s voice.

The desire to hear Ana sing again is overpowering. I am always bereft when I watch this video, knowing it’s her last performance before cancer changed everything. I am absolutely destroyed as the music comes to an end, the crowd roars its applause, and Ana takes a tiny, joyful, satisfied bow.

My mother often says jokingly, “I bask in your reflected glory,” whenever I accomplish something. She is truly proud of me — my success is her success. I didn’t fully understand the meaning of that expression until I heard Ana sing this song for an audience of stunned parents and students, and finally recognized the extent of her gift.

***

Ana in 2012, Age 11.

Ana’s relentless determination to sing, to perform, and to learn about music grew as she got older. When she was 11, she began learning guitar. In the above photo, she’s incredibly sick. I’m not sure if it was taken before or after she was diagnosed, but you can see how thin she is in that shot, how tiny she looks holding the guitar. I think she was wearing her 8-year-old sister’s pants. She’d been losing weight rapidly.

Her focus and determination are evident in this photo. She wanted to play no matter what. This was the start of many years of lessons and performances that marked the last few years of Ana’s life.

At 14, Ana joined Rock Academy, a music program that was more about the performance aspect of music versus the technical skills. She would be pushed out of her comfort zone over and over again as she learned, largely on her own, how to sing songs from artists like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Jane’s Addiction, and Stevie Wonder. She also learned how to play various chord progressions and guitar parts for classic rock songs.

Her first Rock Academy show was centered on Hendrix songs. Ana had to sing “All Along the Watchtower” and “Castles Made of Sand” and play lead guitar for “Little Wing.” We would listen to the songs on the way to her high school, which was a good half-hour drive from our house.

I’d never been a huge Hendrix fan and wasn’t familiar with his songs except, perhaps, “All Along the Watchtower.” We listened to this song together as we drove to school in the morning. “How the heck are you supposed to sing that?” I’d asked her.

“No idea,” Ana said. But she learned. And she nailed it.

***

There was so much music in Ana, so many shows we went to, so many blurry videos of her singing or playing guitar taken on my phone as my heart soared with pride.

They’re all gifts — the videos, the photos, the recordings of her singing. I watch them over and over again. No matter how fuzzy or shaky or muffled they are, they never fail to bring her back to me for just a few minutes, her life force captured in her incredible voice.

***

Ana’s last Rock Academy performance was a departure from the classic rock shows she’d grown used to. She sang a few songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show. She was very sick by then and attending the two rehearsals a week required for the program was nearly impossible. Still, she dragged herself out of bed and did her best.

The producer for that show didn’t want Ana to sing any of the “big” songs. I guess he was worried she wouldn’t be able to pull it off. She’d been so frustrated, that she came home from rehearsal in tears. Ana was good at hiding how sick she was and I suspected that her teacher didn’t fully understand that this would be her last show, so I got on the phone with him. “She’s dying,” I said. “Let her sing what she wants to sing.”

A few weeks later Ana, dressed in full drag as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and sang “Sweet Transvestite” and “Don’t Dream It, Be It”. The crowd was small — maybe a few hundred people. But, oh, how they cheered.

At the end of her life, Ana was invited to professionally record three songs she loved. The recordings were gifted to Ana by Elizabeth Mitchell, a local musician whose daughter was friends with Ana.

Liz has a fully equipped recording studio in her home and she invited Ana to record Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird,” “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues, and “Mother Nature’s Son” by The Beatles. All three songs were recorded in the summer of 2016, about eight months before Ana died.

The recording of “Songbird” is my favorite of the three. It’s beautiful and so perfectly recorded that it’s as though Ana is in the room with me.

Ana had just gotten the news that her cancer had progressed to the point of being incurable. She’d been told there was nothing more that could be done to save her.

In all three of these songs, I can hear the sadness in her voice, the heartache, the understanding that her time is running out. But there is also so much beauty, so much grace, so much determination to make herself heard.

With this in mind, I hope you’ll listen to Ana sing and that you’ll picture me listening with you, and basking in Ana’s reflected glory.

“Songbird”:

“Mother Nature’s Son”:

“Nights in White Satin”:

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