Holy Fright

(Composed and performed by Reynold D. Philipsek 2015 copyright Zino-Rephi Music BMI)

First off, I hope you are all well.

During the last six years of my mother’s life, she had dementia. Part of that included aphasia. Meaning she couldn’t speak. During those last years, I accepted the fact that she couldn’t speak.

Hard fact but real.

One day as I sat with her in the nursing facility they wheeled in a new person who also had dementia but, unlike my mother, seemed extremely agitated. As the woman acted up my mom turned to me, smiled, and said “Holy Fright!”

This is something she often said when I was a kid when something astonished her. But it was the first thing I (or anyone else) had heard her say for a long time. And the last words I ever heard from her. For that one moment, she was her old self again.

This piece is for her.
Be kind.