Waltzing Matilda

  ABOUT THE SONG WALTZING MATILDA:

This is a very special song for me. People who know me and my parents are sometimes surprised when I tell them   that my mom and dad met at Arthur Murray’s dance studio in Peoria Illinois after the war. It’s surprising even to me because I had only see them dance once and that was when I and Joann were married.

My dad was actually very shy and I’m surprised he was even able to work up the courage to ask my mother to dance, and my mother being a bit older by several years, was often passed over when people went to the dance floor. The song Waltzing Matilda came into this love story because it was my mother’s favorite song; and whenever I hear it, even today, I think of her. So it’s not surprising that the two stories would find their way into this song. One thing that was true, from the day they met until the very end, they were undyingly devoted to each other.

Thinking about the first day when they met at the dance studio I could just imagine my dad, shy and searching for something cleaver to say, just reached out to take her hand and said, “Will you come a waltzing with me?”

My dad passed away quietly one Palm Sunday almost forty years ago, during The Wheel of Fortune, with both me and my mom by his side. My mother moved to Tennessee several years later and eventually had a stroke paralyzing the left side of her body, forcing us to move her into a nursing home.

The day that my mother passed, the nursing home called me at work telling me to come quick, but an accident on the interstate kept me from getting to her on time. The nurse met me at the door with a sad look on her face, “She couldn’t wait…”

I asked if I could spend a minute alone with my mom. The nurse smiled, “certainly… take as much time as you want.” When I saw her for the last time it was as if she was sleeping, the pain and dementia were gone… and then I noticed a slight smile on her face. I believe in those last few moments, as her life slipped away, my dad was there, reaching out to take her hand once more…asking her to dance… the way he did when they first met.

That is how the song Waltzing Matilda came about. I wanted it to be a “special” memorial for them, my mom and dad, and the love they shared.

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