The Rainbow Connection

Cross-posting

There’s an a capella group at the company where I work. Back then I was an active member. That’s already a blessing and I guess that’s like telling you that Rosebud’s the sled, but whatever. I had taken a sick day. Several, actually, in order to have some Mohs surgery on my face. It was more extensive than I had realized. In putting me back together the surgeon took one of my frown lines and cut it into little quilt pieces to cover the hole near my eye where the bad parts, now vanquished, had set up shop over the years. I would forever look frownier, but be less cancer-y. My face inflated painfully over the hours that this procedure took, and I’m as sure that someone said something to me about my return appointment as I am that the roar in my ear and residual tinnitus from years of rock music drowned it out. I did hear that they could not give me Tylenol. I’d have to white knuckle it on the long ride home.

Later that day, on the sofa with an ice pack over half of my face and a laptop in my lap, I read that the founder of our company had died. It was not unexpected, and in preparation I’d put together a collection of photos for just this occasion. I phoned a colleague to let her know where she could find the CD in my office. I felt both the loss of this founder, and the loss of sharing the loss with my colleagues.

The next day an email came in from the leader of the a capella group asking if there was interest in singing at a gathering. He’d restructured a song that the founder had liked, that the group had sung for him years earlier. Over the weekend we could rehearse on our own. We rehearsed it twice as a group before the gathering, knowing that if it was awful we could just bail, but it sounded so beautiful and heartfelt. It was good to be with my people in that moment. I had spent the previous three days on the sofa with more ice packs and my face resembled, in the eloquent words of my husband, “as if Albert Einstein had gone through the windshield of a car” (although I felt Edward G. Robinson was more apt). My face was shocking to see, but nobody in our group gawked or joked or made much mention. They could tell that my presence was an act of devotion. I stood in the back, face bandaged.

We rose to the moment. The late Autumn sun streamed into the room where the company stood when we sang. In a perfect world, the final notes would ring out and people would quietly disperse. And that’s what happened. I went back to bed feeling better than when I left.