Love and Death

In the past month,  I’ve received no less than three requests for the same song—“Somewhere in Time.”  It was not a tune I’d played by ear before and isn’t an easy one to pull out of the air on the spot.  So the first time I received a request for it, I barely managed to pluck out the first part of it.  That night I worked out a bit more at home, and sure enough, I was asked to play it the very next week and then, again the week after that.

I was vaguely familiar with the movie it came from, but the movie is now thirty years old. I began wondering—why would I suddenly get so many requests for this theme?

Last night the movie played on tv, and I found out.  Somewhere in Time is a love story ending with the two lovers reuniting after their deaths.  It was only at that last scene that I realized where I received all of the requests to play that beautiful song—from family members of patients in hospice.