The last few days have been a whirlwind of emotions, some of the highest highs, followed by the lowest of lows. My father passed away seven years after being diagnosed with cancer. While I was not in the room when he passed, most of my immediate family were able to be with him within fifteen minutes of his death. While others shed tears, the smile on my face was one of the biggest I ever had. He finished this aspect of his journey. His eighty three year old, one hundred pound body could no longer support his unique energy. He was truly going home, were everyone who has ever loved him was waiting with open arms. The lows, slip in between the cracks of the smile, the hardest aspect was a simple arrangement of "Amazing Grace" for a string quartet that was my gift to him. I'm sure i missed many chances to bring out counter melodies, and nuances buried within the work. Now I understand that my arrangement is worthy of the refrigerator magnet. And that is what it was meant to be, a child representing their love for their parent, expressed through their soul. We all knew that this day was drawing closer with each pound that he lost. The hope that he would no longer suffer overshadowed the fact that he will no longer be in our physical world. A few days before his death, a friend lent me a book with teachings from Archangel Gabriel. The focus of the book was how to fast from negative thinking. For most of my life, I was always a glass half full kind of guy. In the last ten years, my physical and mental health turned me into an everyone else's glass is half full, and I spilled mine again, kind of guy. Within the past few months I turned into an I don't even have a glass to be half full guy. In the book, a mother was telling her child that his grandfather had passed away. The mother reminded the child how often grandpa talked about going home to God, and that he had made the journey. The child was full of joy, Grandpa got his life long wish. While there have been tears pumped from deep wells within my soul, I know that this is indeed the case. Normally, I can find a musical analogy to help me understand what has transpired. Is this a modulation; a new motif; a coda; the flip side; or an expansion of tonality? When a song changes key, do I mourn for the previous notes, or do I marvel at the journey to the new key? You can't have one without the other. The new key is meaningless when not accompanied by it's previous form.