Empty Parking Lots 3
"Empty Parking Lots:" In April, 2020 my 95 year old aunt was isolated in an assisted living facility (nursing home) in Cleveland. I would call her and sing with her on the phone every Sunday, because as a gregarious person she was incredibly lonely. Visits from her adult kids and grandkids were prohibited, even though they lived nearby. She was a singer all her life and knew a century's worth of music, so we never ran out of songs to to sing. But one Sunday she told me what it was like sitting in her room looking out the window, and from those words I wrote a song for her, which I sang for her every week. She had Alzheimers (and was aware of that) so each week she told me she'd forget all about the song and my phone visit by the next Sunday, so I simply reminded her each week and sang "her" song in between Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Yarburg, Stein, show tunes, Garland, etc.... By August she told me one stormy grey Sunday that this would probably be our last phone call, because she felt she would soon be joining my dad (her brother) in heaven. Which she did. But this song remains as a living tribute to her AND to all the many nursing home residents who never got to see their families before dying. I sang the song in Central Park and online, and everyone who heard it seemed to relate in some way, mostly recalling their own aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, siblings, etc who they'd lost.
