Selig Sind

Last week, holy week, was the week from hell, if I may use the expression. But it was pretty awful.

I was feeling pressure with some publication deadlines in advance of some post-Easter vacation time, Jeanie and I had three hour chorus rehearsals for Brahm's Requiem every night except Tuesday. My bike was stolen. I accidentally failed to retrieve a debit card from an ATM machine and so the machine, thinking I had walked off, which I had, ate it. I had to sit in a dentist's chair for another installment on my root canal crisis. And then on Saturday afternoon, I had a major, major computer event. Pretty sickening. It was an awful, painful death, after which Jeanie and I left for the concert hall to sing the Requiem. Fitting.

After the performance the chorus and orchestra were happily mingling in the back stage hallways. Someone asked me, "How's your wife?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

She said, "She fainted during the sixth movement." I was on the far end of the stage left, and JEanie was on the far end stage left, so I could not even see her during the performance.

So I rushed around trying to find the dressing room and found my little petunia, wilted and droopy, sitting on a chair. I got her outside for some fresh air.

What a week.

I woke up on Easter Sunday morning however with hope. He is risen! It was a new day, a new life, a new beginning.

And then I recalled that Brahm's Requiem begins with "Selig sind..." and ends with "Selig sind..."

"Blessed are ..."

I can live with that.