Jennifer Gillin is a music teacher in Melbourne with two young children aged eight and ten. After her mother received some difficult news during a visit to the doctor, Jennifer had to think about how she would communicate this to her children.
“The doctor said, you're in a high risk category. You can't spend time with the grandkids,” Jenny told The Feed of her mother’s visit.
“She said, Jen, could you write me a song? Could you write me a song that sort of tells me and helps me to tell them I can sing with them, they can sing to me, and that lets them know that I love them.”
Gillin quickly began composing the song on her piano, and decided to post her work online. As a music teacher, her first instinct was to publish sheet music first and to her surprise it gained an instant audience, ready to perform their own versions .
“Actually that's been the cool thing is that I get to be a music teacher in a whole other way because people have been playing it,” she said.
“There was a teacher from Queensland who got her class to sing it, a girl who did it on the flute and Italian guitarist.”
Gillin says the little song she wrote for her mother, ‘Oma and Opa’, gave her a whole new understanding of what shutdown means for so many people around the world.
“In a very short time I got a snapshot of the pain that people are going through even more than I was aware of,” she said.
“So many people separated and grandparents and grandchildren had me in a constant puddle of tears for two days.”
Amid all the separation, Gillin says there are so many small acts of kindness happening around the world, and music is one of the ways people can find an escape.
“I think what the song gave people was a different message and a message that was not of doom and gloom, but of hope,” she said.
“And I tell you what, I can't wait until my mom gets a chance to hug her grandkids again and that's it. That's a day worth waiting for.
“And I just hope that in all this insanity we actually get there.”
