What's on your iPod?

Music is intensely personal. What connects with one person goes often times unnoticed or uncared for by another.

Accordingly then, musical tastes differ. As iPods have become more prevalent, the question of who is listening to what becomes a window into the listener.

Slow to move as I am, I've only just this last year entered this magical world of portable music pleasures when my wife gave me an iPod for my birthday, right before Christmastime. Living up to my reputation as a technical blunder, I'm still learning my way around the thing though I use it near-daily.

Only in the last week have I started in earnest the chore of building play lists and importing tracks. To date I've relied on what iTunes found floating around on my hard drive when I first installed it and initially set up the iPod.

There was an eclectic (to say the least) and unusual mix of audio files that found it's way onto the iPod, things I would never have consciously thought to import over. Among those sundries is an instrumental piece from Michael W. Smith. Written in 1998 in memory of fellow Christian artist and friend Rich Mullins--killed the previous September in a car accident--Smith wrote simply in the liner notes to the album on which it appeared, "This piece of music is dedicated to my friend Rich Mullins. I continue to miss him greatly."

It speaks of pain and conveys a sense of sorrow that all who have experienced loss readily understand. To me it is the musical embodiment of melancholy.

At the same time it is hopeful and speaks to the Christian's hope of life beyond what we live now. I have loved it for all these reasons since the moment I first heard it. It reminds at times of just how much I miss my mom.

Though I know that it is right that children should bury parents and never the other way around and that such is a natural part of this life, it still rankles. She should still be here after all, still sharing life, still my father's wife and mother to her only son.

Over the last week or two as I've pressed 'Play' and this tune has started up, unexpectedly most of those times, I'm reminded of this and of her. And I continue to miss her greatly.