A love of music

The last years of my marriage were some of the closest I had to my father-in-law.

When I first met him, I was the 18 year old punk who was, well, f***ing his daughter. I could tell he didn't like me, but I also knew I was going to be around him a lot. I thought that me being a musician and him being a big music fan, there would be a bond. But there wasn't. What did eventually bond us was that he built his own speakers and that fascinated me.

I started picking up magazines about stereo equipment and then would ask him questions. It did bond us. And over a few years, I knew more about this stuff than the average person by a long shot. When I left the music industry, this knowledge came into play for the next 11 years of my business career.

At some point, he retired his hand made speakers for a set of Polk speakers that were "technically wonderful". As my career progressed and I had hands on daily knowledge of this stuff, I knew more about what he would really want.

And, over the years, he and I would talk about various musicians. He never spoke about why he liked something, just that he did like/love pieces.

In 2002, he wanted to replace his speakers and so I convinced him that I knew the right ones for him. I set him up with some Definitive Technology speakers...and I was right. He had them for a while and we set them up right with some additional new equipment and he was set.

Around this same time, he had some heart issues. At the same time, they discovered he had lymphoma. Over most of the next year, he was in a hospital.

During one break, when he got to go home, we went to visit.

The entire time he was in the hospital, I had offered to bring him a Wave Radio and some CDs, but he didn't want to listen to music. I couldn't understand that, but I think it was just depression. When I hit a rock bottom recently, I was listening less.

So we go to the house and you could hear the system from the driveway. I hadn't heard him crank it up in a long period of time. We walked into the house and I went to the living room.

I'm not sure if Norah Jones was supposed to be played this loud, but there she was at almost overwhelming volume. And as I turned to see Stan in his chair, I was struck.

He was sitting there with his eyes closed and tears pouring down his face. I felt like an intruder. I tried to walk back out but he opened his eyes. I would have normally expected, from him, a sense of embarrassment or something like that. But that didn't happen.

He looked at me, with even more tears starting, and said simply this:

"I forgot. I forgot how beautiful it is."

And so was he.