Marie’s Funeral (Part 2)

by Anna Huckabee Tull

Each month, for the first twelve months after Marie Pechet’s passing, I will carry her Blog forward, sharing about Marie in ways that I hope you will find meaningful, connective, and honoring of our shared friend.

Here we are, two months after Marie’s passing, and I find myself looking out at the snow outside my window this evening and remembering what turned out to be my favorite part of her memorial service this past December: the way it ended. So I want to tell you about that.

I shared last month that eight years ago, when she first got her diagnosis, Marie had worked with me to write two songs. The first was From the Inside. It came out as a deep and soulful journey of a song, tracking Marie’s shift from feeling “all alone” to feeling “all one” as she grappled with her diagnosis and, on an even deeper level, her fundamental wellness.

But there was also a second song. It didn’t “show up from out of nowhere” like From the Inside did. It was rather specifically conjured and requested by Marie. “I want something that sounds like me, feels like me, but helps me feel more alive right now,” she had said.

The song The Days of Your Opening practically wrote itself. I came flying over to Marie’s house when it was “hot off the press” to play it for her on my guitar. Her face lit up. She didn’t want to change a word of it. Neither did I.