I don’t know if they have radios in heaven. But I hope they do. I hope the angels find one tomorrow night.

I hope they tune this radio to 650 AM WSM, Nashville. I hope they listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Start to finish. I hope my entire ancestry gathers around that little speaker. All my forebears. All my deceased relatives. Even the ones I don’t know.

I hope you’re listening, Granddaddy. After all, you were the family musician. The first musician I ever knew. The multi-instrumentalist who came back from a Second World War with an Italian fiddle in your rucksack.

You were the one who, as a skinny teenager, would sing on the gospel-hour radio shows, back during the Depression, howling into a microphone that looked like a snuff tin. You played piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin. I still have your fiddle.

And, dearest Granddaddy, I hope your mother is gathered around the radio, too. The same great-grandmother I never knew.

The woman with violent red hair, who was a young widow before age 40. Who lived on a desolate tenant farm, with four kids, one of whom had polio. The woman who, at times, worked the land herself until her hands bled.

She struggled to make ends meet by giving piano lessons to every child in that backwater town. She went without eating sometimes, so her children could have supper.

Sometimes I feel her spirit with me. I have felt this presence ever since childhood. I have felt a strong, redheaded musician. And this spirit is feminine. I don’t know how I know this. She’s watching over me. She loves me. I’m never alone.

I also hope my Uncle John is also listening on Saturday night.

Uncle John, the man who wore overalls every day of his adult life. The man who transformed cussing into a sophisticated artform.

The man who lived on our property after my dad’s suicide. Who once admitted to me that he knew nothing about being a father, but he knew how to make little boys laugh. And he tried so hard to make me laugh until I peed myself. Many times, he was successful in this noble endeavor.

He lived in his dilapidated RV, parked at the rear of our property. He perpetually wheezed, and struggled to breathe, the result of a serious accident in a fertilizer factory. And he always, ALWAYS had a guitar on his knee.

One day, he pulled me aside and said to me, “Little Seaner…” That’s what he called me. “Little Seaner,” he said, “I think it’s time you learned how to play this thing.”

I hope you’re listening too, Daddy. You most of all. I hope you’ve gathered the whole family together around that radio.

I hope you’re listening with your own parents, who never spoke to us again after your suicide, becuase they were Catholic. And suicide was unforgivable to the Catholics in those days. I hope you have found forgiveness and love. I hope they have found the same.

I hope you’ve also gathered Granny. Dearest “Grabby,” the little five-foot woman who read her fettered Bible through every year, and volunteered at the hospital because it’s what Jesus would have done. I still have that Bible.

The woman who wrote poetry, who never lost her temper, who had a lazy eye and always tilted her head when she smiled at you, so you’d be in focus. Whose dying request, while connected to a ventilator, was for a Winston cigarette.

I hope the broken family that I come from is no longer broken Up There. I hope when you, my deceased family members, gather around that radio, you’re all smiling. And I hope you’re proud when the announcer says my name and I walk onto that stage.

Because although we are a splintered family; although we are not together in this lifetime; although we were codependent; and supremely messed up; selfish and imperfect; although we hurt each other worse than any strangers ever could; although we spent our lives trying to overcome pain caused by our own blood kin; although we have not always loved unconditionally; although at times our clan has been torn asunder. I still hope you’re proud of me.

Because, despite our mistakes, despite our troubles, Little Seaner is so proud of you.