Ashokan Farewell

A tune, a memory, a poem, a story

The poem:

When I hear that tune,
I feel the fiddle in my hands
Though I laid down my bow
So long ago.

The story: I have a playlist that winds me down at bedtime. Just now, for the first time in never, it served up “Ashokan Farewell”, the haunting theme song for Ken Burns’ Civil War series. It just about broke my heart to hear it. It was the reason I took up violin in my forties, and one of the first pieces I memorized. I’d taken piano lessons as a girl, but that instrument always felt…distant, so separate from me. My fiddle was part of me; the vibrations ran from fingers to hand to body right into my soul. I played for not quite fifteen years, mostly with a very amateur Celtic band, and it was a dream come true to watch people waltz as we played “Ashokan Farewell”

Then one weekend, in a pickup football game, I caught the ball wrong and broke a finger, right at the top joint. It never healed right. I tried to regain my grip for months, squeezing every exercise device I could find. I joked that I would never make it to Carnegie Hall now. I donated the fiddle to the local high school. I learned to say “I used to” and not sound sad.

But tonight, as I turned down the covers, I heard it again, and remembered.

https://youtu.be/2kZASM8OX7s?si=0VvLG2VXWRSH68qV