Listening to a song about someone's life

One morning, when I was looking after the dogs for Jane and Ken, I'd awoken alone in the house - I opened my eyes an hour or so before dawn - the walls of the blue bedroom were still lost in darkness -

I thought I heard the sound of flutes, very faint, yet very clear - the music crept into my soul - I was ravished by the music - I wondered if I was awake, or in some lucid dream - I felt my soul start to drift away from me - you could see it, like a yellow feather, floating through the air -

I lay absolutely still - the music stopped abruptly - it was as though the substance of the world had settled into a new shape - I could no longer see my soul, swaying from side to side above me -

Later, when Jane and Ken had returned, I told them about the music -

That music must be for someone who's died - they sing a song about them, Jane said -

I thought about my own life - what song would my life shape?

I remembered all of the funerals I had attended - the last one I had attended had been one for my uncle Vic -  Vic had worked, man and boy, for Southern Gas - our voices were small and reedy when we sang the hymns -

There were two pieces of music played over the chapel's loudspeakers - The first piece of music was Every time we say goodbye, sung by Ella Fitzgerald - the second piece of music was the Dam Busters' March - 

The Dam Busters' March was played when we filed out of the mean chapel - there was a photograph of Vic, placed in its frame on top of the coffin - it showed him smiling, wearing an apron, in his kitchen, doing some baking -

My heart ached when I thought of that moment - the music - the photograph - the frigid beauty of the flowers upon the shiny wood - the feathers, rustling in the air above our heads -