N'Keigh's Lullaby

9 years ago this October the world got a little darker for me. I received an email from my uncle saying that my cousin N'Keigh Hodges had died. I remember staring at the computer screen for a solid ten minutes trying to comprehend the words on the screen, reading it over and over again because I was sure I had read it wrong. N'Keigh was my closest friend growing up. I always looked forward to either her visiting me in Missouri or my family driving down to Oklahoma to visit her family. For a long while we were each other's pen pals, writing detailed handwritten letters about what was going on in our lives and how much we both loved the X Files.

Her death affected me in ways that I am just now beginning to understand. At the time of the funeral I remember feeling the need to memorialize her in some way. I tried at least a dozen times over the next 9 years to capture what I loved about her, always falling short in some way. Recently, I began thinking about all the things N'Keigh was in the eyes of her loved ones. She was a loved daughter and a miracle baby that survived being born premature. I remember seeing pictures of my granddad holding her entire body in the palm of his hand when she was released from the ICU. Then she became a loving big sister to Katie Hodges. Then my cousins and I entered the picture and she played the role of the best friend. Later on in life she became a loving mother to two amazing kids, Seth and Julie. 

After pondering these thoughts I then began to write what would become my memorial to her. It is a delicate lullaby, something that I imagined could have been sung to her when she was in the ICU. At certain points the melody is harmonized, representing her singing the lullaby to her children. 

My hope is to record the song within the next couple of months and share it for those who would like to listen to it.