On Friday, Wartburg Choir will be coming to town to perform with the Mount Vernon High School Choir.
It’s a day after Wartburg hosts its UKnight Day fundraising event, where I’m already remembering my time at college as a supporter of the event. Like, I pulled up the Wartburg College yearbook to look up some pictures/items to share and realized this September will mark 20 years of myself being on Facebook as well as remembered a couple of pages I helped design of two different yearbooks in college.
The concert is also the day after my late college roommate would have celebrated his 37th birthday. I’ve spoken about this in columns a few years ago, about the ripples after A.J. passed away by suicide, in the efforts to keep his memory alive with a 5K walk/run in our hometown for a number of years.
One of the other ripples from A.J.’s passing was his classmates and Wartburg College alum helped contribute to fund an original song following his passing. One of the first performances of that piece by the Tipton High School choir happened just days prior to the COVID-19 shut down. I don’t think I was aware of the original performance of that piece, as I wasn’t there for that first performance, just found out about it a few years after when a video was shared.
Life just ahead of that shutdown now five years ago are all a blur of trying to recall “what do you remember about things in the weeks pre-COVID?”
I’m not making that mistake this time, as that will also be one of the pieces performed by Wartburg Choir, a group A.J was involved with all four years at our alma mater. My sister, Andrea, who was also one of A.J.’s classmates in high school tipped me off about the concert happening when she started texting me to ask “Where is the Mount Vernon Performing Arts Center at in your town? Because there’s a concert there I plan on attending.”
I know this has taken a lot of work of people who loved A.J., and it will be one of the pieces to be performed by a terrific choir.
There have been so many things I’m wrestling with in the past few years I’ve wanted to be able to text or message or just vent about to my former roommate. Some of them more personal than I’m willing to admit in a column. Some of those 5K walks I had a turtle’s pace were a good time to get my head around some off those conversations, alone with my thoughts and music.
The upcoming concert has been reminding me a lot of the impact he had on my life in the year we were roommates and even after, and trying to keep those positive ripples going and keeping him in my memory.