Songs For The End Of The Road

And then sooner or later, one of these days I am going to die, and so I have been thinking of the music I would like to accompany me out of this world.  Not celestial choirs, but really great performers in the here and now, or maybe recently here and now, because I am not sure they are still all with us.  I vote first and foremost for Freddie Mercury singing "Those Were The Days Of Our Lives."  His voice is superb, there so much love and compassion in his rendition of the song, and to watch on the Youtube video the band backing him is to realize so much love and artistry combined.  The song itself recorded with Freddie's knowledge of imminent death and only days before the event is punctuated again and again by the refrain "I still love you."  Oh, god, what an ache of the heart, but yet with his mischievous smile, a kind of gentle goodbye to us all.  An inspiration.  Another candidate for consoling end of the road music is Joan Baez singing "Gracias a la vida." (Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto=thank you to life that has given me so much.}  Of course, it has her extraordinary rich voice that enobles the word, but the sentiments ring true throughout,  It is a song that defies lamentation, instead reminds us all that life is a gift and whatever its complications, we should always be grateful for the exsperience of living.  Then for a real tear jerker let me offer Linda Ronstadt, EmmyLou Harris, and Dolly Parton singing "The Sweetest Gift", all about a mother's smile shining on a convict in prison.  It's a song to me about the ineffable sadness of how life does not work and how the bonds of affection are so frail and easily lost.  Mournful is the word, I guess.  But wait, maybe the end is not that nigh, come to think of it.  So let's get back up on the dance floor.  Get Gloria Gaynor to sing for us "I will survive" and accelerate to the disco beat.  Can there be anything more exhilarating than disco?  As an old man I can look back to swing, to jitterbugging, to country western swing dance, to rhythm and blues and shaking my tush, and the disco.  What enchantment!  I could have danced all night, but not to the insipid music which Julie Andrews is singing about, but no, the disco beat.  Forget about dying.