I had my iPod on shuffle today as I was out running errands and one of the treasures that came on was a song from Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads album (You might not know the album, but you probably know the big hit from it; El Paso). This was an 8-track from my childhood that was played over and over again in my home. It's also the 8-track I would pop in for my mom to listen to after I had brought her some buttermilk and dumped her barf-bucket when she was having one of her "nerves" spells (sometimes bouts of major depression, sometimes bouts of crippling anxiety).
During her spells she wouldn't be able to escape her bed except to use the bathroom. Sometimes it would be a couple of days, sometimes several of her dissociated misery, and my feeble attempts to make it better. And I knew it was my job to take care of her. It seems funny to me now that Gunfighter Ballads would be the music I picked for her to cheer her up, as it is a bit melancholy with most of the characters getting shot by a "Big Iron" or trampled in a stampeded. But it was an album that I knew she loved, and I wanted for her to feel better.
I also find it...funny that I still love this album in spite of the fact that it is so deeply associated with my mother's darkness, and those horrible days of worry, especially when I had to leave her alone while I went to school with dad already gone for the day (not that he would be much help in his drunken stupors anyway). I guess Marty Robbins transcends all things.
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