Because her mom was right. You have to feel it all the way.
The first track was “The Power of Love.” Lena remembered her mom singing it off-key while making meatloaf, using a wooden spoon as a microphone. The second track was “If You Asked Me To.” That was the song playing when her mom got the call that the cancer was in remission, the first time. And then the third track… “Beauty and the Beast.” That was the lullaby.
She remembered the day they bought it. Tower Records. Her mom had held it up like a trophy. “Look, Lena! ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ ‘Because You Loved Me,’ ‘The Power of Love’—it’s all the best ones. One CD to rule them all.” Her mom had a habit of calling everything “the one CD to rule them all,” even a collection of Gregorian chants.
Now, she was twenty-six, sitting in a parking lot outside the storage unit facility where she was supposed to be clearing out the last of her mother’s things. The Civic’s engine hummed, the heater blasting against the December chill. She picked up the jewel case. The plastic had a few hairline cracks. The booklet inside was probably still pristine. celine dion all the way cd
Her phone buzzed. A text from her dad: “You okay, kid? You don’t have to do it all today.”
She’d found it that morning, tucked behind a shoebox of old tax returns in her late mother’s closet. A Post-it note was stuck to the back, the handwriting unmistakably her own: “Mom – for the drive to chemo. We listen together. Love, L.”
The player whirred. A quiet hiss of silence. Then, the first piano chords of “The Power of Love” filled the car. Because her mom was right
By the time the last track, “Then You Look at Me,” faded out, the sun had fully set. The parking lot was dark. Lena’s tears had dried into salt trails on her cheeks. The car felt different. Warmer. Less like a metal box and more like a cathedral.
The song ended. A moment of silence. Then the tick of the laser moving to the next track.
She saw her mom in the kitchen, flour on her cheek. She saw her mom in the hospital bed, hair gone, but still humming. She saw her mom in the passenger seat of this very car, pointing at a billboard and saying, “You see that? She feels it, Lena. That’s the secret. You have to feel it all the way.” The second track was “If You Asked Me To
She didn’t put the CD back in its case. She left it in the player, turned the key, and drove toward the storage unit. She wasn’t going to clear it out today. But she was going to listen to the CD one more time on the drive there. And one more time on the way back.
Lena didn’t skip. She let “If You Asked Me To” play. And then “Beauty and the Beast.” And then the title track, “All the Way,” where Celine sang about loving someone for a lifetime.
Lena’s thumb traced the tracklist. All the Way. It’s All Coming Back to Me Now. Each title was a door to a room she wasn’t ready to enter.