I can remember only two outbursts of emotion at these events. When my grandmother on my dad�s side died, my father went up and gave her a final kiss before they closed the lid. I think my older brother, Ken, later remarked on how odd that was. Later during the church service, my father broke down and wept.

For us kids-the scores of cousins on either side of my father�s Hungarian and mother�s Belgian extended families-a funeral was a chance to get together and play, tell jokes and otherwise run rampant. I remember after my grandfather�s funeral playing hide and seek in the church over the basement where the meal was being held. The reverend came up and told us to stop. Maybe this just goes to show how one�s developmental age only makes one able to process certain concepts and emotions. Unless the child was close to the adult who died, which wasn�t the case with my father�s parents, then the grieving process might not even be relevant.

For example, how many children are able to understand the concept of finality and irrevocable loss? Still, I remember having a recurring, disturbing dream for many years in which I felt a sense of dread as I saw myself approaching my grandfather�s bier. These dreams certainly were exacerbated by one funeral I attended as a young boy, which did shock me.

My father had a step cousin who had a son. I had never met the son, so I did not think anything of it one day when my father announced that he and I were going to the son�s funeral. When we got to the funeral home, however, I was shocked to see that the body in the casket was no larger than my own. He was my age-about eight. I distinctly remember being freaked out as my father took me up to kneel beside the casket and say a prayer. The undertaker had arranged the hands in a praying position and entwined a rosary through the fingers. Seeing the boy there scared me more than anything has ever done either before or after. And I notice I have butterflies in my stomach as I write about the event right now, as an adult of 44 years.

For years thereafter death scared me. It still does a bit, but less so now after reading about the death and dying process. I had to do that after my own daughter--when she reached the age of 6 or 7-started asking me about the ways people can die. What I learned in my readings is that there are age-appropriate approaches one can take to help a child deal with death, and I wished someone had used some of them on me when I was a child.

I guess I can�t really blame my parents for this-although for a long time I did. My father had two sisters, one of whom died shortly after being born and the other when she was about 14. This was in the 1920s when infant mortality in immigrant communities was pretty high and before they had developed vaccines for all the major childhood illnesses. Since death was such a matter-of-fact part of everyday life back then, people were probably just expected to get on with their life. In the west, we have it pretty cushy and our long life spans mean that you can hide old people away and have them die without disturbing things. Our cults of health and individualism have also made us think somehow that we�re immortal or that �death is optional.� And why do you think that cloning is such a bid deal?

Why do I bring all of this up in relation to Brahm�s Symphony Number 3 in F Major? Because during the spring of 1976, when I was living in the French House and had become taken with all of Brahm�s symphonies, my father�s best friend died. WE called him Uncle Steve, though he wasn�t our uncle at all. But he and my father had grown up together during the depression and they had worked together for nearly 30 years in the same factory in South Bend, Indiana.

As a child, I loved to go to Uncle Steve�s house. It lay about 15 miles way out near the air port in the middle of a fertile agricultural plain that had been formed by draining the Kankakee marsh. His house sat on the edge of a huge farm that grew corn and near another where a family had a huge peppermint oil farm. On summer visits to Uncle Steve�s, you could smell the peppermint wafting across the field.

What I liked best, however, was Uncle Steve�s house. I remember the house having a cathedral ceiling and along one wall, it was all glass and Steve had filled every surface with plants, so that it looked like a green house. But what I liked best was that it was chock-a-block with all kinds of knick-knacks and curios. It reminded me a bit of the Adam�s Family�s house-there was a footstool made from an elephant�s foot and a manic cuckoo clock, which all kids love. Steve was a kind man who always joked with us and his wife, Ann, always had wonderful Hungarian pastries on hand for us.

On a call home, my mother informed me that Uncle Steve was dying. He had colon cancer and he was slipping fast. She said my father had spent many evening bedside and was pretty devastated when Uncle Steve eventually died. Dad never talked to me about the death, except to describe the grizzly end.

Why am I telling you this? Uncle Steve died nearly 23 years ago. He wasn�t famous, or important, or particularly altruistic. Why should you care? Yet, this is what life is all about. It�s about the small sphere of influence we operate in and the people who matter to us. That�s what�s really important-how we love and treat and take care of these people. Why, then, do we care more about the death of an inbred princess who smashes her Mercedes into a bridge abutment with her lover than we care for a young girl raped and killed and thrown into a mass grave in Kosovo? Why is princess Diana�s death considered tragic, when millions still die because of ethnic conflicts, starvation, neglect and diseases for which there have been cures for nearly a century? There is more tragedy in child labor and infanticide, which are rife, than in any bored Hollywood star�s sex life.

But maybe I should get back to Brahms. I picked up the Symphony Number 3 the other day to listen to it once again for this entry. I couldn�t remember the last time I had listened to it, which astounded me, because it has one of the most beautiful and stirring movements of any piece of music I know. I am referring to the third movement, marked �poco allegro.� The entire symphony is masterfully orchestrated, but in the third movement Brahms really managed to use every instrument to evoke such strong emotions. It is a quite, meditative movement, which some might consider a bit sad. But it has a flowing, lyrical quality to it that really is sublime.

I can just picture myself sitting in my dorm room 23 years ago listening to this and feeling sorry for myself. And now as I listen to it again, I feel those same emotions welling back up. Is that bad? So many people hurt and don�t acknowledge it and shove their pain down to get on with their lives. Sooner or later, however, it will bubble up and then they will explode, have a stress related illness, hurt someone, or their beloved will leave because they�ve become so shut down.

So don�t be afraid of sad music. It can be as therapeutic for you as it was for the composer who wrote it.

Brahms Bio

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