Music.

For most, it is simply entertainment. For some, it fills the silence. For others, it is just noise, or a distraction from what weighs on the mind. But for a smaller number, music is more—it is healing, it is connection, even a kind of spiritual touch.

For me, it is a bit of all of those things.

I love music. I listen all the time. And when I’m not, my brain plays it anyway, faintly, in the distant corners of my mind.

It just so happens that I play music too—Mariachi music. I don’t really consider myself a musician, not in the formal sense. But with Mariachi, perhaps that matters less than people think. It is music born from emotion. Passion, feeling, longing, joy, heartbreak—every note seems to carry something human inside it.

Maybe that’s why it reaches people the way it does. It doesn’t just play in the background. It settles somewhere deeper.

It has the power to stir memory, to awaken emotions long buried, to make the heart ache and sing at the same time. A single note can transport me to another place, another time, to someone I love—or someone I have lost. And sometimes, in the quietest moments, it reminds me that even the deepest ache can give way to calm, even the heaviest absence can leave room for light.

Most days, it’s positive energy, a soundtrack to ordinary life.

Lately, though, certain songs—the tiniest fragments—have become keys to memory, unlocking flashes of the past; the seasoning that makes life taste like life.

This morning was no different.

Until it was.

A favorite of my mother’s began to play from my phone, from the playlist she helped curate, at perhaps the quietest moment of my day: just minutes after the students had started their first class. The campus had settled; the hallways were quiet.

El Árbol.

My own favorite too.

Suddenly, a flood of memories poured in—warm, tender, familiar—like a blanket wrapped around me on a cold day. And then, just as suddenly, the warmth dissolved, leaving a profound emptiness—the kind only those who have lost someone truly know.

I wanted to cry, but there were no tears—only the ache.

I found myself wanting to be alone, if just for a moment.

I went for a walk. Around the outer perimeter of the schoolyard, just me and the breeze, the sun’s warmth softened by its edge. The students’ voices faded into distant hums; even my thoughts quieted.

Soon, it was only me and the birds, hidden among the trees. So many thoughts, so many emotions coursed through me at once that I could not hold on to any single one. All I could do was close my eyes and let them pass by, like the breeze moving through the branches above me.

I’m not sure when it happened—or if it did at all—but the emptiness lifted, or perhaps I simply accepted it. The ache faded, my thoughts returned, and memory and music mingled again.

Then, a hummingbird—bright, impossibly small—appeared. It hovered before me for a brief moment, a burst of color and life, and then it was gone.

And suddenly, the world seemed to regain its color. My heart, for the first time in hours, felt light.

I often wonder if others have experienced this: this renewal of spirit, a moment of healing from what can at times feel impossibly far. A small, fleeting repair in the internal rhythm of our hearts.

There’s a strange magic in those moments: grief, loss, or emptiness can feel permanent, and then suddenly—a song, a bird, a scent, a memory—something shifts.

A sudden, unexpected spark that says: you’re not done, the world is still here, and so are you.

It’s not always dramatic; sometimes it’s almost imperceptible. But you feel it in your body, in your chest, in the way the world seems brighter for a heartbeat.

***

This is almost an aside… almost. But it is a very human thing to experience this. These moments—fleeting as they are—feel like small renewals of the spirit, quiet reminders that healing sometimes arrives without announcement.

I miss my mom. And perhaps, in that quiet moment beneath the trees, she sensed it. Maybe that small hummingbird was her way of letting me know that she misses me too.