The Soundtrack of Our Lives

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Whenever someone we've known through music, television, movies or culture passes away, there's a sadness that feels more personal than we expect. Even when they've lived a long, full life.

We're not just mourning them. We're mourning the part they played in the soundtrack of our lives.

The older I get, the more I realize how much of my life can be traced through music and the people who made it. A song can take me back to an apartment I haven't lived in for decades. A voice can remind me of who I was dating, where I was working, what I was driving, who my friends were, what I thought my life was going to look like. Sometimes all it takes is the first few notes.

And suddenly, there I am.

Artists become markers of time without us realizing it. We grow up with them. We fall in love with them playing in the background. We get our hearts broken to their songs. We dance, clean the house, take road trips, celebrate birthdays, and sometimes cry ourselves to sleep with their voices filling the room.

Actors do the same work in a different key. The show everyone talked about the next morning. The character who felt like family even though we knew they weren't real. We remember exactly who we were sitting next to when we watched.

They were living their lives. And without knowing it, they were keeping pieces of ours.

Maybe that's why losing them feels so personal. We didn't know them, but we knew who we were when they were there.

I think that's what changes as we get older. When someone from our younger years passes, the sadness isn't always about wishing they'd had more time. Sometimes it's the realization that another little piece of the world we came from is gone. Another voice. Another face. Another reminder of a time when our parents were younger, our friends lived closer, our bodies hurt less, and there seemed to be an endless amount of life ahead of us.

That doesn't make getting older sad. It makes me appreciate what a gift it is to have lived long enough to collect a soundtrack.

And what a soundtrack mine has been. Some songs belong to people I loved. Others belong to places and versions of me I barely recognize anymore, but remember with great affection.

So when another artist from my life's soundtrack leaves this earth, I understand a little better why it hits the way it does. I'll be sad that they're gone. But I'll be grateful they were here.

Because somewhere along the way, while they were busy making music and art and memories of their own, they became part of mine.

Every now and then, all I have to do is press play. And there I am again.