Last March, my 22 yr. old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. She is a beautiful young woman who had graduated from college and moved to NYC and was working in publishing on Madison Ave. in a true dream job, and she has been the light of my life since the day she was born. She has been battling for her life ever since, and the battle continues.
My wife and I flew out of Atlanta on the March 10th of last year, and my wife has been with our daughter continuously since, first in NYC and since August at Duke University Medical Center, where our daughter will undergo her second bone marrow transplant in exactly two weeks. I, meanwhile, have commuted as often as humanly possible, and lived alone otherwise.
I have spent, over the last year, untold hours walking alone at my club on late afternoons after work to avoid going home to an empty house and all that it signifies. But I realized quickly that being alone with my thoughts was NOT productive or healthy. Music combined with golf was my salvation.
Walking for several hours while listening to good music and hitting golf shots as well has been great, great therapy for me. I won't over-dramatize it say that it has "saved" me; I'm not the one who is sick. But it is healthy and good and both distracting and engaging at the same time, and just beats the hell out of being alone with the spiders that live in my brain these days.
I used to smile to myself when I saw somebody at the range or on the course with earbuds; I thought that golf should be enough, and questioned their commitment to the game. Never again; I don't know what is going on in their life and what role golf and music play. And if the combination of the two helps them, God bless 'em.