Rocky Mountain High Newsletter
May 2003


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 Sunshine On My Shoulder

       by Connie S. Reeder Nichols

    While driving south to Miami after dropping my 19-year-old
daughter off at a retreat in upstate New York, I found myself
somewhere on I-95 on a dank, cold September morning. About
half-way through the Carolinas I'd played out all the
cd's brought along for the trip and let the radio scan through
the local stations, spitting out music between white noise.
    My thoughts swirled around five seconds of a country song,
then a top ten hit and on to a preacher making his point about
hell, but always back to my daughter and our private
nightmare. A few months earlier a voice in the middle of the
night called to say my daughter, struggling with addiction and
missing for several days, had overdosed and was dead. This
proved to be false, but several hours passed before I knew she
was alive and by then my heart had nearly pounded through my
chest. For now she was safe, but the fear of losing her was
ever present. This retreat I'd driven her to was a favorite of
mine and my friend John Denver, who I sang and traveled with
for over twenty years.
    John and his music was not on my radar growing up and
before meeting him in the flesh his image conjured up a dorky
guy with simpleton songs for a simpleton audience. At first I
reluctantly told my friends about my gig with John, especially
jazz musicians, but John, tall, good-looking and not dorky,
soon won me over, not necessarily for his music, but for his
truth, his sincerity and a genuine affection for people and
nature.
    Before the Denver tour the largest audience I'd performed
in front of topped maybe five thousand. Millions filled John
Denver concerts for decades. Sometimes from the stage I'd look
out over a sea of people. His 'simple' songs struck a
chord for millions of fans, who still cherish him years after
his death. They were way ahead of me.
    Losing John a month after my mom's passing tested me in
ways known only to people who experience a tremendous loss,
which more than likely includes anyone breathing and walking
around on planet Earth, but three years later another test,
my beautiful daughter, my baby's life hung by a thread.
    Being at the retreat had reminded me of John and the love
for all things seen and unseen that we shared. Maybe that's
why while driving on a lone stretch of highway on a dreary
fall morning and lost in thoughts of despair, I stopped the
scanning radio when I heard John's familiar, clear, tenor
voice, 'Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Sunshine in
my eyes can make me cry.'
    Through streaming tears I started singing lyrics I'd sung
hundreds of times at hundreds of venues in front of millions
of people with this now disembodied voice on the radio.
'Sunshine on the water looks so lovely.' And then it happened.
As if on cue a narrow beam of light pierced through the clouds
and hit my shoulder through the window of my car. On that
lonely road in the middle of nowhere and somewhere in the
midst of a life crisis, my sorrow, my angst, my broken dreams
were all dissolved by that beam of light burning into my left
shoulder.
    In the space of three chords I learned volumes about
myself, about music, about life, about the simplicity of love
and John, who knew his audience well. I sang at the top of my
lungs to this audience of one, me. "Sunshine almost always
makes me high", lifting my spirit to an undisclosed height
where it remains to this day.


Copyright 2002 by C.S. Reeder Nichols  http://www.csreeder.com
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