Bonnie Raitt told Billboard magazine, “She turned her grief into something that’s moving for all of us. It’s giving me a window to look at life and death and loss from such an elevated perspective.”
Several years ago, Americans felt Eric Clapton’s heartache over the death of his little boy, Connor, who is memorialized in the Clapton’s, “Tears in Heaven.” Now comes Cindy Bullens who has released a masterwork with a cycle of ten songs chronicling her experiences nursing, loving, and eventually losing her 11-year old daughter, Jessie Bullens-Crewe, to cancer in 1996.
When I first met Bullens last summer at the annual meeting of American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, I was struck by the unlikely presence of a woman with a guitar, standing alone at a table in an exhibit hall usually reserved for pharmaceutical agents and software developers. As she and I spoke, my own rambunctious nine-year old interrupted me, and I rolled my eyes, mother-to-mother. That’s when Cindy pulled out a picture of her daughter, who might have been my son’s twin. She reminded me that each child is a precious gift, ours for whatever brief time fate allows. For months afterward, whenever Conor pushed my last button, I would remember Cindy telling me, “What I wouldn’t give to hear Jessie yell, ‘Mom.’”
In a way, when Bullens sings, she does hear her daughter; in an interview with People magazine, Bullens said that while touring for the album, she and her daughter sing a duet.
In the CD’s liner notes, rock critic Dave Marsh writes, Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth is a miracle…. Part of that miracle is that Cindy draws so deeply and relentlessly from that shattering experience, without letting up for one verse of one song…. But the other part of the miracle, the more important part, I bet Jessie would say - is how Cindy has chosen to sing. Against every set of odds, Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth, suffused as it is with grief and pain, is not morbid or depressing. It’s exhilarating and triumphant.”
That exhilaration comes through clearly in songs like “A Thousand Shades of Grey,” in which Bullens sings:
I swear I saw a blazing lightBullens’ career as a singer-songwriter began in the mid-seventies, with a debut album, Desire Wire, and a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance for her single, “Survivor.” Her new project includes vocals by Bonnie Raitt, Beth Neilsen Champman, Bryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams. Bullens’ daughter, Reid, sings an emotional chorus in “As Long as You Love (Scarlet Wings).”
Ascending from the shore
With a color so familiar
I had seen this light beforeOh can you hear me?
If I shout out loud above the raging sea
Oh can you see me?
If I stay here long enough will you come to me?
Will you come to me?
Bullens told Exchange, “I would trade it in a second just to have her back…there is no word in the English language to describe the dichotomy.” When asked how she finds the strength to sing nightly about the worst event in her life, Bullens says, “I’m not sure that I have to find the strength. I know that there is a purpose for these songs. I feel that Jessie has laid out a plan for me. I draw on her strength—her spirit, which was huge, to do this…. There is no separating from the reality of the subject matter. I don’t think there’s such a thing as getting beyond my grief. One just learns how to live with it. This music is my way.”
To order a copy of the CD, visit amazon.com or a local music store, or visit Cindy’s own website at www.cindybullens.com. A portion of the CD’s proceeds go to The Maine Children’s Cancer Program; other contributions may be made to The Jessie Bullens-Crew Foundation, 86 Turtle Road, Cumberland, Maine 04021.
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