Latest breaking news, including politics, crime and celebrity. Find stories, updates and expert opinion. A detailed Sanya fun guide with a Sanya spa resorts review, by Vijay Verghese, and more from Smart Travel Asia and Dancing Wolf Media. UN News Centre Official site for daily UN news, press releases, statements, briefings and calendar of events. Includes UN radio, video, webcasts, magazines. Jodi Picoult Sing You Home. One sunny, crisp Saturday in September when I was seven years old, I watched my father drop dead. I was playing with my favorite doll on the stone wall that bordered our driveway while he mowed the lawn. One minute he was mowing, and the next, he was face first in the grass as the mower propelled itself in slow motion down the hill of our backyard. I thought at first he was sleeping, or playing a game. But when I crouched beside him on the lawn, his eyes were still open. Damp cut grass stuck to his forehead. I dont remember calling for my mother, but I must have. When I think about that day, it is in slow motion. Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications IJERA is an open access online peer reviewed international journal that publishes research. The mower, walking alone. The carton of milk my mother was carrying when she ran outside, which dropped to the tarred driveway. The sound of round vowels as my mother screamed into the phone to give our address to the ambulance. My mother left me at the neighbors house while she went to the hospital. Kathmandu Heart Rate Monitor Manual' title='Kathmandu Heart Rate Monitor Manual' />The neighbor was an old woman whose couch smelled like pee. She offered me chocolate covered peppermints that were so old the chocolate had turned white at the edges. When her telephone rang I wandered into the backyard and crawled behind a row of hedges. In the soft mulch, I buried my doll and walked away. My mother never noticed that it was gone but then, it barely seemed that she acknowledged my father being gone, either. She never cried. She stood stiff backed through my fathers funeral. She sat across from me at the kitchen table that I still sometimes set with a third place for my father, as we gradually ate our way through chipped beef casserole and mac and cheese and franks, sympathy platters from my fathers colleagues and neighbors who thought food could make up for the fact that they didnt know what to say. When a robustly healthy 4. Come too close, and you might catch our bad luck. Six months after my father died, my mother still stoic took his suits and shirts out of the closet they shared and brought them to Goodwill. She asked the liquor store for boxes and she packed away the biography that he had been reading, which had been on the nightstand all this time and his pipe, and his coin collection. IWOWN-font-Pro-font-smartband-Heart-Rate-Monitor-Smart-600x600.jpg' alt='Kathmandu Heart Rate Monitor Manual' title='Kathmandu Heart Rate Monitor Manual' />She did not pack away his Abbott and Costello videos, although she always had told my father that she never really understood what made them funny. My mother carried these boxes to the attic, a place that seemed to trap cluster flies and heat. On her third trip up, she didnt come back. Instead, what floated downstairs was a silly, fizzy refrain piped through the speakers of an old record player. I could not understand all the words, but it had something to do with a witch doctor telling someone how to win the heart of a girl. Ooo eee ooh ahh ahh, ting tang walla walla bing bang, I heard. It made a laugh bubble up in my chest, and since I hadnt laughed all that much lately, I hurried to the source. When I stepped into the attic, I found my mother weeping. This record, she said, playing it over again. It made him so happy. I knew better than to ask why, then, she was sobbing. Instead, I curled up beside her and listened to the song that had finally given my mother permission to cry. Every life has a soundtrack. There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. Theres another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday mornings to pick up the New York Times. Theres the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub and the one that brings back my cousin Isobels sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup. If you ask me, music is the language of memory. Wanda, the shift nurse at Shady Grove Assisted Living, hands me a visitor pass, although Ive been coming to the nursing home for the past year to work with various clients. How is he today I ask. The usual, Wanda says. Swinging from the chandelier and entertaining the masses with a combination of tap dancing and shadow puppets. I laugh. In the twelve months Ive been Mr. Dockers music therapist, hes interacted with me twice. Most of the time, he sits in his bed or a wheelchair, staring through me, completely unresponsive. When I tell people I am a music therapist, they think it means I play guitar for people who are in the hospital that Im a performer. Actually, Im more like a physical therapist, except instead of using treadmills and grab bars as tools, I use music. When I tell people that, they usually dismiss my job as some New Age BS. In fact, its very scientific. In brain scans, music lights up the medial pre frontal cortex and jump starts a memory that starts playing in your mind. All of a sudden you can see a place, a person, an incident. The strongest responses to music the ones that elicit vivid memories cause the greatest activity on brain scans. Its for this reason that stroke patients can access lyrics before they remember language why Alzheimers patients can still remember songs from their youth. And why I havent given up on Mr. Docker yet. Thanks for the warning, I tell Wanda, and I pick up my duffel, my guitar and my djembe. Put those down, she insists. Youre not supposed to be carrying anything heavy. Then Id better get rid of this, I say, touching my belly. In my twenty eighth week, Im enormous and Im also completely lying. I worked way too hard to have this baby to feel like any part of the pregnancy is a burden. I give Wanda a wave, and head down the hall to start todays session. Usually my nursing home clients meet in a group setting, but Mr. Docker is a special case. A former CEO of a Fortune 5. Mim contracts my services for weekly sessions. Hes just shy of eighty, has a lions mane of white hair, and gnarled hands that apparently used to play a mean jazz piano. The last time Mr. Docker gave any indication that he was aware I shared the same physical space as him was two months ago. Id been playing my guitar, and he smacked his fist against the handle of his wheelchair twice. I am not sure if he wanted to chime in for good measure or was trying to tell me to stop but he was in rhythm. I knock and open the door. Mr. Docker I say. Its Zoe. Zoe Baxter. You feel like playing a little music. Someone on staff has moved him to an armchair, where he sits looking out the window. Or maybe just through it hes not focusing on anything. His hands are curled in his lap like lobster claws. Right I say briskly, trying to maneuver myself around the bed and the television stand and the table with his untouched breakfast still intact. What should we sing today I wait a beat, but am not really expecting an answer. Best Way To Download Audio Books here. You Are My Sunshine I ask. Tennessee Waltz I try to extract my guitar from its case in a small space beside the bed, which is not really big enough for my instrument and my pregnancy. Settling the guitar awkwardly on top of my belly, I start to strum a few chords. Then, on second thought, I put it down. I rummage through the duffel bag for a maraca I have all sorts of small instruments in there, for opportunities just like this. I gently wedge it into the curl of his hand. Just in case you want to join in. Then I start singing softly. Take me out to the ballgame take me out with the. The end, I leave hanging. Theres a need in all of us to finish a phrase we know, and so Im hoping to get him to mutter that final crowd. I glance at Mr. Docker, but the maraca remains clenched in his hand, silent. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack I dont care if I never get back. I keep singing as I step in front of him, strumming gently. Let me root, root, root for the home team if they dont win its a shame. For its one, two, three. Suddenly Mr. Dockers hand comes flying up and the maraca clips me in the mouth. Im so surprised I stagger backward, and tears spring to my eyes. I can taste blood. I press my sleeve to my cut lip, trying to keep him from seeing that hes hurt me.