This One Goes Out To You
Thirteen years ago, on October 15th, my best friend, Samantha McCarthy (S.M.), passed away. In her honor, S.M.'s mom, Nikki, founded "Sam's Fans," which supports music and art therapy for sick kids in Ohio hospitals. A friend of Nikki's, Miranda, owns a fashion boutique called "Thread," and every year, Thread hosts a fashion show, "Thread of Hope" (TOH), benefiting Sam's fans. TOH is the biggest night of the year for both Thread and Sam's Fans, planning for the next year starting a week after the event. Last year's TOH was branded as “the rainbow after the storm” since it was the first normal event after Covid happened. While planning this year's, they were faced with the choice to stay the same or go bigger than before. They chose the latter and branded this year's as “Be Bold!”
Last Thursday, October 27th, 2022 at 7:00, I entered the Exchange at Bridge Park, where TOH is held and I began to mingle. Before the major events of the night begin I managed to talk to, Nikki, her husband Dan, two of their kids, her mom Patti, her sister Abby, a few more members of the family, as well as, Mandy, and Allie, some of Nikki's friends, and Sam's Fans social media director Avery. As I was walking around the venue, I saw someone from behind, who I thought I recognized. There's no way, I thought to myself, he doesn't even live in Ohio anymore, and I've never met him at any Sam’s Fans events before this!
The event started and Nikki and Miranda got on stage. They started to talk and explained they chose “Be Bold” as the branding because it's what the kids Sam's Fans helps need to do every day. When they had finished, they kicked off the live auction, which they'd never had before, by introducing a professional Auctioneer named Jay. Sidebar- I had no idea that auctioneers said the numbers that fast in real life, and I thought it was really funny!
When the auction ended, Nikki returned to the stage alone. With all eyes on her, she told S.M.’s story. She talked about S.M’s diagnosis and her time in the hospital. She talked about her shots and blood draws, how terrible she felt, how she lost her hair, and how she inevitably died. Then Nikki started talking about, S.M.’s personal music therapy story. Specifically, she talked about a song, called “On & On” by Mat Kearney, that S.M. and her music therapist, Brian, recorded a cover of as a gift for Mother's Day. Nikki then explained that Brian was there with another music therapist named Alexa, who is funded by Sam's Fans and they had a song for us. “I'm going to say to you,” Nikki said as she introduced the pair, “what Sam said to me In my special recording ‘This one goes out to you!’”
Brian and Alexa introduced themselves and I chuckled to myself because I was right about Brian being there. Brian told us that he had asked Nikki, what she would want the theme song of the night to be, and she chose “Kind & Generous” by Natalie Merchant. There was one more surprise. Something that music therapists do when they record songs, is they sometimes record the heartbeat of a patient and use it as the beat that the music is played to. Well for this performance, Alexa had gotten the recording of Nikki's heartbeat. After they turned on the recording, Brian and Alexa started playing the song.
I've believed in music therapy, since I joined Sam's Fans, shortly before my junior year of high school. But I've never seen it…not like this, at least. As a writer, I hate to admit this, but sometimes, the English language (and I'm assuming any language, for that matter), fails to completely capture the things we experience as human beings. I cannot describe to you, in perfect detail what it was like to experience this…but I think it might have been one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
Have a Greattastic Day and be safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
After Brian and Alexa finished playing, the fashion show started, and after that people started dispersing. I ran around and eventually found Dan. “Hey, Dan!” I said.
“Hey, Mitchell! What's up?” He replied.
“Has Nikki talked to you yet?” I asked.
“Yes, she has!” He exclaimed knowingly.
“Okay,” I continued, “So I want to run a few things over with you guys as a family… So I will be reaching out sometime next month to try to get some things worked out.”
“Sounds good to me.” He said.
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