The Gift of Song and Suffering

“When you look up, think of me. I’ll shine here, and you’ll shine there.”

Greetings from the Great Beyond!

This weekend, candles and marigolds will glow across Mexico and beyond for Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead, a holiday when the living honor their ancestors. Inspired by that spirit, we’re sharing a story of remembrance, devotion, and music that transcends the veil between worlds.

Mark Spiro was one of those rare songwriters whose fingerprints are all over the music of his time, even if we didn’t know his name. He wrote songs for Julian Lennon, Steven Tyler, Cheap Trick, Bad English, Heart, Selena, Vince Gill, Mr. Big, and John Waite— helping craft the sound of an era — and released his own albums filled with yearning, wonder, and light.

To his peers, he was a master of melody; to his family and friends, he was a man of deep kindness and faith. Before he passed away last year on his 67th birthday, the outpouring of love during his illness was immediate and immense — more than $94,000 was raised from over 300 donors to help with his cancer care. It wasn’t charity. It was gratitude.

In this week’s feature, Summer Spiro writes about the journey of watching her father return to the spiritual world and the gifts of song and surrender he left behind. But “The Gift of Song and Suffering” is not just a daughter’s elegy — it’s a portrait of three women bound by love: Summer, her sister Ruby (who records under the name Knightly), and their mother Leslie. Together, they carry Mark’s voice forward in their own art — most movingly in the song “Fisherman,” written, produced and performed by Ruby. All three Spiro women sing on the track and appear in its music video, (directed by Summer). In the music video, their harmonies rise alongside Mark’s own spoken voice — a chorus of love that refuses to fade.

The Spiro family’s story reminds us that, while death ends our earthly life, our soul’s eternal song goes on and on.

— The Soul Boom Team

The Gift of Song and Suffering

by Summer Spiro

My father was a poet. A wordsmith melody master from Seattle, youngest of 5 boys. Long blonde hair to his middle back and a sweet exhausted smile. He would whisper his prayers into the night sky after blowing out the last drag of his cigarette. He grew up singing hymns in Bible camp, fishing Puget Sound, climbing Mount Rainier. When he met my mother he learned about the Baha’i Faith. She told him about the oneness of mankind, the oneness of religion, the oneness of God, and he fell in love. They were married three months later. I can hear him singing his lyrics “When I looked in the eyes of a woman and I knew right then and there that’s my wife”. He never had to try to write music, he had to try to NOT write music. The songs would spin and spin in his big ol’ noggin like a “rotisserie” he would say. He gifted our family with hundreds of songs about our life.

Now with him in the next world, his lyrics float through my head like direct text messages from heaven when I need them most. A memory will appear: The time I raised my voice at him over taking the long way home. The time I didn’t text him back after he apologized. The time I didn’t take the pain in his leg seriously. The time I told him I would edit his Trash Prophets video and forgot. Any time I didn’t choose love, and those times are notorious for memory replay, my knees will buckle and an invisible sword makes its way through my organs at the thought of wasting one precious moment with my Dad. Almost instantly, I receive his lyric “I don’t believe in yesterday.”

Death is confusing because my Dad is alive. I look at the sky and say “Where’d you go Dad? Where’d you go?” I pray for a rip in the veil to reveal itself, and it does. The dog he sent me a photo of years ago shows up tied to a tree a block away from my house after he passes. My sister names him Sky. He sends me images of Mount Rainier, that snowy topped mountain finds me in waiting room slide shows, on Washington license plates, in store front paintings and bumper stickers nearly every day. In a dream, I run into his arms and melt into his chest as he says “I knew you would find me!” In another dream, I’m weeping over his body as he laughs “ppsshhhh, that’s just an actor playing me.”

I didn’t think I would survive my Dad’s death. Sitting at his bedside, watching him shrink into an unrecognizable bony human garment, I’m squeezing broth from a medicine dropper into his cheek, one of his eyes won’t close and the other can’t stay open, I beg God for a miracle like my life depends on it because it does. I love my Dad more than other people love their Dads, I used to think. You can’t take him. Not myyy Dad. He had stage 4 cancer as well as a very rare, 1 in 100,000 autoimmune disorder called a paraneoplastic syndrome. It caused antibodies to swim in his spinal fluid, it caused delirium, it caused hallucinations, it caused nerve damage, it caused his body to be a place he could no longer live. “I’m not afraid of becoming new, never have been” he said once. When he was sick I was obsessed with his disease. At 3am my phone is inches from my face as my eyes voraciously scan the National Institute of Health website, reading clinical trial reports, ordering every book on an anti-cancer diet, forcing teaspoons of ginseng and dan shen into his mouth, broccoli sprouts on everything, more turmeric, let’s add quercetin. I’m engrossed in every lab and scan result, believing that if anyone can beat the odds, it’s us. I’m hearing my Dad’s lyrics “I won’t quit until the miracle happens.”

I thought I would write a book about fighting cancer and autoimmune encephalitis and valiantly confronting a battle you have no chance at winning. A book about mustering the courage to show up in the face of cruelty and relentless horror and coming out the other end victorious. I’m hearing my dad’s lyrics “go another mile, go another minute.” I clean the cancer wound on his neck every day for a year without seeing an inch of improvement. Thirty minutes twice a day to avoid infection in the blood stream. “Who’s cleaning the neck wound?” the doctor in the ER asks. “Me” I say. “Really nice work,” he says. I feel proud of myself. Happily taking credit for something completely out of my hands. Another doctor tries to discuss “end of life care” and my partition goes up. Conversation over. I’m going to cure him, I thought. You’ll see, I thought. But his body started slipping through our fingers. Another infection, resistance to antibiotics, pills couldn’t be swallowed, he wasn’t singing in bed anymore. It was a tug-of war between Mark Spiro’s wife and daughters vs. the angels in heaven. We had his arm, they had his foot. No matter what we did, he got worse. I had the doctor’s cell phone numbers. I’d text them updates, they’d text back instructions. This one neurologist met me at Barnes & Noble on a Saturday afternoon to give me drugs in a brown paper bag that insurance wouldn’t cover. I learned how to change the IV drip myself. Rubber gloves, alcohol wipes, bed pads, the three of us girls were ‘round the clock nurses. All four of us squeezed in a 2 bedroom, all hands on deck. It didn’t matter. “Make me ready” he started muttering. “Make me ready.” No God, please don’t. I don’t want him to be ready. I want him to stay.

One month before he passed, we’re all sitting on his bed watching Yellowstone, when he started speaking clearly. We put the show on pause not to miss a single syllable. “Hiii” he said smiling, looking at us, recognizing us. We had an endorphins rush of hope. The medicine is finally working! We used this brief window of clarity to fill him in on all he had missed. “You have a rare brain disorder Dad, but we’re treating it. We’re fixing it Dad. We’re gonna get to the bottom of it!” He smiled so big and said “Thank you.” I started to panic. I wondered if this was one of those moments people talk about. Where after decades of dementia, all of the sudden they are clear of any confusion right before they die. “Check him!” Ruby cried. I take his blood pressure, his oxygen, his temperature. His numbers are perfect. I’m holding his hand, my moms head rests on his chest, my sister strokes his forehead. “When you look up, think of me.” He says, “I’ll shine here, and you’ll shine there.”

Before my Dad got sick, he was working on what would have been his magnum opus. A metaphysical musical called “Birth Day” about people who have died and mysteriously reappear on their Birth Day for 24 hours. The play wrestles science vs spirituality, life and death, and if you had a second chance to do it all over again, what would you do? The morning of my Dad’s 67th Birthday, Ruby said the sunlight poured through his window differently. More luminous, more present. My cousin had sent over a chocolate cake that sat at the edge of the bed. “I gotta go” he managed to say. “I gotta go.” He wasn’t breathing right, and I knew. There was a fullness in the room, an unspeakable pain, an overwhelming power that enveloped me. A feeling that something “ordained” was taking place. Something that this Magnificent Power had been planning and watching unfold from before I was born. That nothing I could do, and nothing I had been doing, was going to change this day. It was a rotunda of kisses “we’re right behind you” we kept saying. “You are everything” “thank you” “I’d choose you in every lifetime” “you’re perfect Daddy.” Every expression of love feeling frustratingly inadequate compared to the bursting in our chest. These types of tears were made of something else. It wasn’t just my eyes, my mouth was full of tears too.

The moment he left the mortal world, we looked up, and stretched out our arms. Hoping that if he had floated up over his body, up to the ceiling, he could see our faces, feel our cries of love as he took his place with the angels. We howled I LOVE YOU, our eyes darting around hoping for some kind of light in the dimensions to appear. We wanted him to see all we had endured together, that we carried him there, placed him on the doorsteps of heaven, that we loved him eternally, unconditionally. I’m hearing him sing his lyrics “Nothing in between us, nothing in between us.” His body lay in his spot for a few hours. We kissed his face, his hands, never wanting to have to say goodbye to the beautiful and thoroughly lived-in vessel that carried this rare bird.

Some cultures believe that people who die on their birthday have perfectly completed their purpose on earth, and I do believe my Dad did. Though I’d do anything to have more earth-time. I used to believe in coincidences, but I don’t think those exist at all anymore. I think it’s all on purpose. Every teeny tiny little thing is for our development and the development of those around us. The songs he wrote for his musical Birth Day, I look up at the moon and sing back to him now. “Come over here and dance with me, and memorize my face, cause I’ll follow in your footsteps, when I get to heaven’s gates, will you remember me?”

Someone asked me recently how my Dad died, and I had to think about it. Oh yeah, he had cancer, I say. But it doesn’t really feel like the truth anymore. The second my Daddy’s soul abandoned his physical body, his disease disappeared from my psyche. It all melted away. I have no intention of writing a book about battling disease because I don’t believe death is a consequence. I don’t believe death is the result of doing something wrong. I believe in trying, I believe in digging, I believe in pushing, I believe in seeing it to the end, and I also believe our day is our day. Death is part of the design, the Creator’s perfect handiwork and the most alchemizing transformative experience this world has to offer us. What I wanted more than anything was for God to heal my Dad. And for some, it might look like he wasn’t healed. But I know he was. Through the gift of suffering, through the gift of surrender, of sacrifice, of prayer, of unconditional love, he was healed. That type of healing is eternal. Healing of the body is only temporary. The only reason I am surviving his death is because I realize, not as a concept, but for real, that a day will come for each one of us, where our body does not get better.

We found a plot overlooking a Southern California mountain range. We bathe his body in rose water. Adorn his crown with frankincense. A sprinkle of Holy Water made especially for him from his favorite nurse. He’s covered in light pink rose petals, teardrops and song. We pray over him. Place the Baha’i burial ring on his finger. “I came forth from God and return unto Him”. We wrap him in a creamy white Italian silk with frayed edges that my mom hand-picked and it really is just as Rumi describes. Death is our wedding with eternity. We take photos because it’s just so unbelievably beautiful. When I show my cousin the photo she gasps and says, “Can you guys wrap me too?” My Daddy is placed in a casket with a light wooden finish called “Norfolk”. His body goes into the ground the first Saturday of April. I open my prayer book to say the Baha’i Burial Prayer and look up like he told me to. There’s an eagle circling above us. I’m hearing my dad sing “When the Kingdom Come, and we get through this together, we were born to die but we learn to fly, when the Kingdom Come”. I feel like I can’t wait to join him.

One year later, I still can’t believe my Dad’s body is buried in the dirt. This one night in the car after holding in my tears all day, I unleash my violent sobbing to my mom, “I want to dig Daddy up and see his bones.” She felt the same. I kept on. “I want to take one of his bones from the earth and keep it under my pillow and if I ever get married in this life, I will have to explain to my husband that I sleep with a piece of my Dad’s bone under my pillow and it will be the real test to see if he can handle me or not.” She agreed this was reasonable as we cry-laughed. Weeks later, I have a dream we dig up my Dad. My mom opens the casket, looks at me with a big smile and says, “He looks great!”

Ruby writes a song called “Fisherman”. For Daddy, our Mountain, Mark Spiro. “He’s the King of the Crows, he’s the Bud of a Rose, he’s the Wings of a Sparrow” she writes. It sounds just like a song he would have written and I swear I can hear his voice sneaking in the harmonies. My Dad used to always say “If you got God, then you got everything” and she makes that her chorus. My mom, Ruby, and I drive to the Eastern Sierras to make this video together, an honoring of my Dad’s life, an honoring of our family. We arrive at our hotel after midnight, only to find that our room keys were not put in the designated hiding place. I’m looking into the pitch black darkness of this tiny town and pray we don’t have to sleep in the car. The only place open I could find, is a motel a few blocks down called “The Ruby Inn.” Perfect. They hand us our room keys that say “WiFi: The Ruby Inn, password: MARK 1229” We shake our heads at each other. He’s here. We get to our rooms and look up the verse Mark 1229 to see what treasure might be hiding in this clue: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Even from the other side, my Dad still lights the way.

Watch the music video “Fisherman“ below…

You can continue following The Spiro Family’s artistry & grief journey on instagram: @summerspiro, @knightlybird, @lesliespiro

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And Soul Boomlets, if you’re open to sharing your memories of loved ones who’ve passed on, we’d love to see them in the comments ⬇️