Leslie Sisson is weaver of dreams. Her music paints beautiful soundscapes that can be both as harsh as heartbreak and as warm as a Texas hug. When I interviewed her back in 2012, her frank answers added an extra layer of emotions to her only solo album. Harmony was partly inspired by Leslie’s mom and it was the last song of hers she heard before sadly passing away.

I can’t fathom the conflicted emotions in Leslie Sisson at the moment, but I can sympathise with the loss of a relative. It’s a tough as nails moment and as time passes, mourning might seem overcome, but it’s not, it’s there, creeping on the back.

A term I thought about once when drinking with some friends was “advanced mourning”, referring to that painful sadness growing in you way before someone close to you passes away. It might be a night terror when you are a kid. It might be a loathsome daydream you had when you fell asleep on class. It could strike anytime and when the moment comes, you go back to that song. It happened with my dad and Lisa Gerrard’s Gortoz A Ran. After I received the phone call from the hospital, I slid down the door frame and Lisa Gerrard mournful vocals came to mind.

The advanced mourning for my mother is Harmony. And it almost killed me. I was driving through Santa Monica in 2016, on a roadtrip I described earlier. The highway was busy, with a few tricky curves. There were tiny trees with pink flowers in the middle of the 101, and Harmony came up on shuffle. I started to worry about my mother and started to cry, barely managing to brake before slamming into a truck. I had to stop on a side road, having this certainty that my mother had suddenly died and I frantically tried to call back home, roaming charges be damned. I didn’t get an answer and my anxiety drew worse. It was a terrible driving experience as I still had to make it up all the way to Pismo and I kept replaying Harmony on the way there, having another breakdown at a Panera bread in Arroyo Grande. God bless the employees who calmed me down and helped me get to the hotel I had booked.

Uncertainty is a part of life and it’s a piercing feeling through your body that hobbles your daily routine. I don’t know how this will end, but I know Leslie’s song is with me to keep me company.

-Sam J. Valdés López.