Stories Behind the Songs: “Moment”

Posted by  Grand Poobah  September 4, 2015  •  No Comments  • 

“Moment” is a very personal song for me. The initial germ (verse and bridge chords and melody) of the song arrived in August 2005; two years later, just after Transposition was finished, I had the beginning of the chorus melody. A month after that, on the night before our wedding, my fiancée received some test results that indicated she had cancer.

She began chemotherapy and radiation treatments at the end of October. Meanwhile, I had committed to providing music for the church service prior to Thanksgiving, with the theme of gratitude. Despite all that was going on, it was a beautiful, warm autumn, and my wife and I were newlyweds. Life seemed so valuable and precious, and I really felt I had a lot to be grateful for. I finished the song about a week before the service.

I knew that the odds were not in favor of my wife’s survival. When I performed the song at church, I nearly broke down while singing “Don’t want to say goodbye”, but somehow I held myself together. Unexpectedly to me (I don’t know why), there were lots of tears in the audience afterward. My wife did beat the odds and survive the cancer, but succumbed to other health issues in the spring of 2015.

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