She was born in the Summer of Love, and danced a chubby baby dance with her mother at Woodstock. She loved light and color, movement and music, and she loved to sing. More than anything, though, she loved Burt Hummel. She loved him enough to settle down in Lima, Ohio, and to bear him a son. Burt was the yin to her yang, vanilla to her mint chocolate chip. To Burt, she was his noon, his midnight, his talk, his song…but that would come later.

Burt Hummel was a brilliant mechanic, but what he knew about music stopped in the mid-80s. She sang enough for them both – current pop hits, classic rock from her childhood, musicals, she loved it all. She woke up her baby boy singing Good Day Starshine, and soothed his toddler fussiness with Olivia Newton-John, and sang him to sleep with whatever had caught her attention that day, from Ace of Base to Into the Woods. His first sentence was "song, mama," and from that day on they sang together.

Every year in the rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas they would bundle up to New York, to visit family. Burt would stay and watch the game with her brothers, while she took her sister in to the City to fight the crowds in the bargain basements and sample houses. She took Kurt with her, of course, and they would stop at Time Square to see the pretty lights and pet the police horses. Seeing a show was part of that yearly ritual, too. The year that Kurt was two-nearly-three, they saw Beauty and the Beast, and a light was born in his eyes that never went away. For his third birthday, he asked for shoes like Belle's.

There was a lot of talk behind the scenes then, about things like expectations and the future and acceptance, but Kurt never knew about those conversations. He only knew that his parents loved him without reservation.

They spent those years in a bubble, when Burt looked back on it, full of light and music and fragrance. By Kurt's fourth birthday he was taking dancing lessons; by his fifth he was helping his dad in the shop. By his sixth birthday, he was beginning to understand his strength and his difference. Burt had thought that bubble, that love, would last for ever; he was wrong. By Kurt's seventh birthday, their anchor was gone and they began to drift.

Funeral Blues
W H Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.