Here’s a question to ponder: What whistle would you choose to play at your mother’s funeral?
That was a choice I had to grapple with this past Saturday. Early that morning, with only an hour to go, I still hadn’t come to a final decision.
I had the tune ready, of course. When she’d gone into the hospital in mid-May for what figured to be the last time, I’d composed a funeral tune for her, my 21st-century pseudo-rational mind eagerly embracing the idea of a pre-emptive medical-musical mojo. I’d taken a similar tack with my father the year before, composing a tune for him when he appeared to have both hands wrapped around death’s door knob. . . he pulled through and is doing fine. This time, Fate was not so easily outwitted, but at least I had something ready, a simple air simply titled “Isabel McCullough”.
Which whistle, then, to use?
My first thought was to the acoustics of the performing space itself. The nave of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Moorestown, New Jersey, is a large, high-ceilinged neo-gothic stone box filled with wood pews, marble floors, stained-glass windows, metal holy water fonts, hard-back hymnals, leather-sheathed kneelers – an enveloping tapestry of sound-repelling surfaces that render inaudible any speech issuing from the altar even if you’re three feet away. On the International Reverb Scale of 1-10 (10 representing a volcanic eruption/meteor shower occurring during the Sturgis motorcycle rally), this room is a definite 12.
However, with a solo tinwhistle, I wondered if the natural echo could be an enhancement, helping thicken and sustain the small, thin sound of an unamplified instrument that would normally be weak and distant in a room this expansive, half-filled as it would be with living human bodies to add a little aural cushioning.
Another factor was the high humidity: the church is without AC, and the steady rain outside had made the air inside thick and pulpously moist. I would need a whistle capable of producing a strong, solid, full-bodied tone, yet with enough lightness to dance above the prevailing acoustic mud.
As I rummaged through my instrument case, I realized that this short bit of music would be my final public communication with my mother. Whatever this tune might say from me to her needed to be clearly expressed, since most of our spoken discourse over our adult lives had not been. I’m quite certain that to the very last moment of her life she never had any idea as to why I grew up to do what I do or how I became who I became (does any parent?). I was thinking this tune might serve as an explanation.
I needed a whistle that could convey emotion without sounding sappy. A whistle that could speak boldly, with conviction, but not be strident or harsh. A whistle that could hold a steady course from start to finish, because once we got going, things might get unruly.
Frankly, I didn’t hear much of what was said during the Mass. I kept hearing the tune in my head, kept practicing the fingering on the wooden pew top, which was now sweating from the humidity. Following communion, Father McElroy (originally from County Down) motioned my Uncle Jack Manion to the altar. After reminiscing for a moment about my mother and her intense love of all things Irish, my uncle introduced me to come forth and play the tune.
I stepped to the podium and nodded to all present. From my inside jacket pocket, I drew a Burke DASBT (D Aluminum Session Black Tipped), put fipple to lips, closed my eyes and blew.
As I rolled out the first phrase, I knew I’d chosen the right whistle for the task at hand. The notes floated in the air, held firmly aloft by the room echo. It was all lower octave but each note was distinct and crisp. At the end of phrase two, I slid smoothly into the whole-note A from the grace G below. . . a comfortable feeling, like stepping into the family kitchen after a long absence and seeing your favorite meal laid out on the table.
By the middle of phrase three, I wasn’t sure what I was playing. Which is to say, I wasn’t exactly hearing the melody my fingers were playing, but a conversation expressed in tone language cascading alongside a flurry of mental images drawn from photographs, films, frozen snippets of real-life moments my mind believes it remembers occurring — an experience not-quite-out-of-body but intensely in-body and fused together as a stream of colliding, churning sensation encased in a musical shell that kept my fingers and tongue moving until suddenly the tune was over, the last note suspended in the airstream fading from my throat, its final moment of existence buoyed by the silence from a collective stoppage of breath. . . then abruptly terminated and sealed into memory by a smattering of light applause mixed with muffled sobs.
It was her favorite kind of tune – you liked it, but it made you miserable.
To be sure, it was only a short minute of music I’ll likely not get many requests to repeat. But it was played, I believe, on the best instrument at hand. She deserved the best, anyway, even if only at the last.
Then again, we’ll see. In life, my mother always had the final word in a conversation. I don’t expect that to change now. So I’m waiting to hear back about my performance. And my choice of whistle. I anticipate she’ll be pleased with both.
— L.E. McCullough, June 28, 2006
