Marie Baruso Mechaluk
July 26, 1973 - September 22, 2018:
A Shining Angel
Tragedy and Melody
I'm sure that many of you heard the tragedy, this past September 2018, about our good
"neighborhood" friend Russ Mechaluk, whose 45 year old wife Marie was killed in
a car accident.
Russ and Marie had just sold their house in LI, and were ready
to begin their new lives together in Naples Florida . They had recently renewed their vows
and celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in May with a beautiful gathering at La
Nonna's restaurant in Williamsburg Brooklyn. I mean, they just got to Florida! The clean
out crew was at their LI house on September 6th. Marie was dead 2 weeks later.
The Saturday before she was to start her new job as a school
counselor, Russ and Marie were rear-ended by a 20 year old "kid" on US 41 in
Collier county Florida. The collision caused the car to rotate into the median, where it
struck a palm tree. Russ suffered some injuries. Marie was pronounced dead at the
hospital.
This was unbelievable...a true tragedy! People are still
shaking their heads.
On Christmas day Russ reached out to me on Facebook saying:
"... just wrote the lyrics to a song for Marie.... gotta
get with my man Joe Kirsch Curcio to bring this to musical fruition..."
Trying not to introduce any additional drama into this already
sad and dramatic tragedy, I must tell you that I've done lots of music in my career, but
there was much more to this than simple notes on a page or muse inspiration. It started
with a picture...
I keep a white board in my studio listing the current projects
that I'm working on. There was a blank space on the board where on Christmas night I added
the working title "Shining Angel" for the song. I took a picture of the board so
that I could send it to Russ as "a Christmas gift" to let him know that it was
on the list and ready to go.
click to enlarge
OK, the auto-flash was on my phone camera and so maybe that
explains it... but was it a coincidence that the reflection (or orb) lit up like a bullet
point right next to that song title? That one, randomly added song amongst twenty other
titles? I don't think so.
There were other things that happened as well that are too long
to explain, but most notable was the "force" behind this production that lead to
the music and vocal chorus to be completed and recorded by December 26th, less than a day
later. By January 3rd the song "Shining Angel" was up on YouTube.
Please understand -- and by no means am I saying this to blow
my own horn or promote myself, but -- it was Christmas day, I had to compose the melody
and chord structure, tweak the lyrics, play and record ALL of the instruments and sing ALL
of the background and lead vocals. Then mix the session, convert all of the files. Then
finally create and post the video! The only thing I didn't do was the guitar intro, which
was brilliantly performed, as usual, by Carl Battista.
There was much more to this than just what's on the surface...
I believe that "someone" had their hand on my back all the way on this. Knowing
that this would help Russ slowly heal...of course never to completely feel whole without
her, but at least feel some peace within this awful, awful tragedy. God bless Russ. God
bless Marie.
Here is
the song on YouTube. Please share it.
A footnote to this, Russ played drums on a GreenPointMusic
produced
song called Kamikaze
Cadillac
Download
Shining Angel
FREE MP3 Here:
(Right click)
