#BestSongEver: ‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles
By Lorraine Badoy
Author’s note: I highly suggest listening to the song while reading my little piece. Full blast. Get the complete experience, I always say.
For years, The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” had the distinct ability to throw me off, stop me dead on my tracks like I’d been sucker-punched in the gut and could drench me in the bluest blues. And it would plunge me in an ocean of sadness for which I had no name for, this sadness.
I had no idea where it came from—only that it felt like a dull ache that started in some deep place inside me and spread to my heart and enveloped me completely in some deep dark blue funk that took all of me to get out of.
I’d be hurriedly walking up the stairs of UP carrying my bike, focused on getting to class on time (I was always late—all of the 3 times I went to class, hardyharhar) when this song suddenly plays from some Manong’s transistor radio and I’d go “Whoa!”
Cloud of sorrow
And it would slow me down because it would feel like someone karate-chopped my insides all of a sudden. And the sadness and the karate-chopped insides would stay with me the whole day.
And if there was a drunken sing-along with my friends, you can bet “Hey Jude" would be something I would be singing with so much pathos that you could practically see and feel the cloud of sorrow descend on everyone.
I would sing it with my eyes closed, tears welling up and so tender in some parts, I could make a lump form in some hardened criminal’s throat.
Meaning in ‘nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nahhhhh…’
And in the last repetitive and meaningless, “NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH HHHEEEEYYYY JUDE,” I could imbue it with so much meaning, I could transport you to your earliest memory of love and tenderness as an infant child in your mother’s arms or maybe that one night of passionate love that changes you forever.
That was how much feels I had for this song.
One time, after one such performance, I had to sit down and sob for what seemed like an interminable time.
Clueless
And had you passed by and asked me why I was crying like my heart would break forever, I would have looked at you and I would have shrugged my shoulders:
“I! (SOB!) HAVE! (SOB SOB!!) HAVE! NO! IDEA!! (SOB!)”
It was my blue funk song and I had no clue why.
The year my mom died
So I found out recently that “Hey Jude” was released in 1968—the year my mother died. (She died December 28, 1968.) And quite suddenly, I could see scenes in my mind that had “Hey Jude” as musical score.
Basically hospital scenes.
Of 5-year old me and my 28-year old mother.
In the dark.
With her embracing me.
Tight.
And just us two.
Be brave
My beautiful and impossibly young mother crying ever so sadly. And ever so desperately. Like a lost little girl.
And me just-as-sadly and just-as-desperately wiping her tears away and not even half-succeeding because, besides my smallish hands, her tears would not stop.
And me whispering, imploring for her to “be brave”— the very same way she’d whispered for me to “be brave” the countless times I tripped and hurt myself and cried like a banshee.
Clinging to each other
And us both clinging to each other as if our very lives depended on it.
And she rocking me and me rocking her back.
The both of us trying our damnedest to comfort each other and failing miserably at it.
Ungrieved-for death
And in the bed right next to us, a bantay’s radio playing the soft plaintive strains of “Hey Jude”.
In midlife, my mother’s ungrieved-for death asks that I look again at the woman who loved me the most—gaze at her face once more—touch it even. The way I touched her beautiful face when I was on that hospital bed with her and taste the salt of our commingled tears and hear me once again beg her to “be brave” and to bear, once again, the look of immense pain she gives me as her courage leaves her.
And to rock with her once more in the complete and utter sadness of her impending leave-taking.
Tailspin
Not look away but gaze. Touch. Embrace. Completely this time. And to bear this pain—bear it, bear it, bear it—because now it can be borne.
And I’ve often wondered which among the numerous losses I’ve cried for through the years was really me crying for the loss of this woman, my mother. The loss that sent me on a tailspin and hadn’t stopped tail-spinning for the simple reason that I hadn’t put a name to it.
And how the tail-spinning slowed down when I gave it its proper name, “Mama. Yet again.”
Picking up the pieces
In midlife, bits and pieces of my mother’s life have washed to shore, like detritus after a storm with the faint promise of wholeness, finally, once I recognize this piece as “mother loss” instead of “lost love” or “teenagers growing up too fast” or some other wrong name I give it in the haste and noise of modern life.
And I am the patient beachcomber picking up bits and pieces of my mother’s life and holding them up to the sun so I get a clearer view of this piece I’ve just picked up and trying to make some sense of it.
And see where it fits in the cracks and crevices of my heart and my soul.
“Remember to let her into your heart / Then you can start to make it better / Hey Jude don’t be afraid / You were made to / Go out and get her / The minute you let her under your skin / Then you begin to make it better.”
Lorraine Badoy is a doctor. She first posted this story on Facebook.
Would you like to share the story behind your #BestSongEver? Then, simply answer the following:
Name your #BestSongEver and the artist who performed it.
Why is it your #BestSongEver?
Tell us something about yourself (name, age, occupation).
Provide at least 3 horizontal photos of yourself.
Email your story and your photos to: team_yph@yahoo.com , subject line: #BestSongEver.
All published stories are deemed final.
