The loss of a family member can be one of the most devastating things that can happen to us in our lives. We are often left not only with a deep sense of loss, but also confusion and even hopelessness about how to move forward. In our conversation for The Hardcore Humanism Podcast, Nancy Wilson, founding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted band Heart, shared how she has dealt with the loss of her mother.
One of the main themes from Wilson’s first solo album, You and Me is her exploration of her relationship with her mother who passed away after struggling with Alzheimer’s Disease. And during our talk, Wilson explained how she believes that while her mother has died, her connection with her mother lives on and continues to be a powerful force in her life. She recalled one of her earliest memories of her mother. “My first real memory, actually in a crib through the crib bars, was my mother next to me, singing a lullaby… ‘Curly Headed Baby,’” Wilson told me. “And her voice was really not just soothing … She had this beautiful … rich, husky tone in her singing voice that was really comforting.”
As Wilson got older, she recognized that the protection that her mother provided her went beyond the comfort of her mother’s voice. Wilson’s father was a Marine often stationed far away, leaving Wilson’s mother to care for her and her sisters. Wilson recalls feeling in awe of her mother, seeing her as a powerful and multi-talented woman. One memory that Wilson shared was when her mother took Nancy, at age 2, and her sisters, both 4 years old, on a ship to Taiwan where her father was stationed. The ship had no guardrails and Wilson was impressed at how her mother was able to both nurture and control her children. “There were no real railings to speak of on the sides of the huge ship,” Wilson recalled. “So, my mom had to wrangle all of us, including this two-year-old toddler.”
One of the qualities that most impressed Wilson about her mother was her ability to live with the potential loss of her father and other members of her family who were also in the military. This required a combination of allowing herself to feel the fear of losing a loved one while celebrating the moments that they had together. Wilson described one incident in which her mother received telegrams falsely claiming her father had been killed. “A telegram from Western Union that came to my mom when he was at war that came from the opposition that lied purposely to break down the morale of the folks at home claiming that he’d been killed in action. And it wasn’t even true,” she said. “She had two telegrams like that, where she was pregnant with one of us. And she went to the beach and walked the beaches and cried for days, you know, because she thought her husband had been killed in the war … And so her strength and her resilience and her steely, steel magnolia kind of thing, you know, that she embodied was amazing to grow up with.”
In the title track of the album, “You and Me,” Wilson describes how she is able to stay connected to her mother. She explained that her spiritual beliefs include the notion that a person’s energy transcends a conventional notion of life, and that we can communicate with that energy after someone is no longer living in the traditional sense. “Through the osmosis of DNA, we can actually still be together,” Wilson explained. “I’m a spiritual person, you know. And I believe that energy never stops in the universe, I don’t think energy just cuts off and stops. I think it only transforms to a different energy. And wherever that is, however, it manifests, wherever it goes. It’s still there in some form. So, you know, like ripples on ripples on the water, it continues to vibrate out into wherever it is.”
Writing an album that addresses their relationship was particularly meaningful to Wilson because as her mother’s Alzheimer’s progressed, music was one of the main ways that they were able to continue to connect. Wilson described regular family events in which her mother would recognize and tap along to songs from artists such as The Beatles and Harry Nilsson. “Music is in your cellular memory because it’s bigger than just your brain. It’s not just the intake of hearing the music…but it’s the cellular memory of music itself that imprints into your DNA and into your cells. And so that’s why we saw her most alert — in her Alzheimer’s, in late stages even — was when she heard the music,” Wilson explained. “A couple of days before she actually passed, we went and played her some songs. You know, she was pretty laid up. And she didn’t really have much perception or really know who exactly we were. But she remembered the songs, for sure. And it’s so kind of a beautiful thing about music. It’s kind of bigger than we are, it’s what goes into your physiology. And so, we played some, you know, some songs … She’s laying there with her eyes closed, but she’s smiling and tapping her foot. So, it was like the sound of familiar voices of her family.”
The video for the song “You and Me” involves Wilson singing the song surrounded by mirrors. The purpose of that visual effect was to represent Wilson’s connection to her mother. Interestingly, Wilson explained that as she looked into the mirror in the video, she is simultaneously talking to both her mother and herself. “I did the video with mirrors. Because I wanted to have a conversation, that’s also to myself who is also her because of my DNA with her. Speaking through your DNA, because we have similar DNA cells and we have the connection of our skin and our, actually our physique is almost identical … we have the same stature and the same shape and the same type of body,” she described. “So, I always felt like I was her…almost being her because I had so many of her traits. So, I did the video in a mirror where it’s these are paneled mirrors, and so I can speak to her through looking at the lens through a mirror. So, so it’s kind of a once removed yet, talking to myself and to her simultaneously.”
The album has been part of an ongoing spiritual journey that Wilson has taken in understanding her relationship with her mother and coping with her death. And while Wilson feels that she is constantly learning and developing her own spiritual beliefs and practice, she is comforted by her ongoing ability to feel and connect to her mother’s energy. “Being a really spiritual-type person, I don’t subscribe to really any structure, sort of religious, you know, belief system, necessarily. But I do feel that, like I said, energy just transforms. And I don’t think death is just a final black hole that we fall into. Whatever happens, we don’t know. We can’t have certainty,” Wilson said. “And I respect and admire people that can stick to their belief system, ‘And we know that there’s a heaven and we know that we’re getting into heaven and we’re going to see all of our relatives there.’ And that’s really comforting, you know, to have those belief systems. I kind of envy that. I wish I could really go all the way there. But I do feel that there’s there is a spiritual connection.
“Because nothing really truly ever is over.”
