Below is an excerpt from a Washington Post article titled
Her Dad, the 10,000 Records He Left Behind and a Viral Lesson in Grief,
published on January 22, 2025.

For as much as she knows about her father’s love for music and his dad-rock classics, Jula’s listening journey still finds ways to surprise her. Every now and then, she finds a zany or eclectic record tucked into the shelves: an album full of corny jokes, a compilation of Coca-Cola jingles, a Jan and Dean Batman-inspired record with surf songs and sound effects that play out like an audio comic book. When she pulls out those records, she wonders whether she’s discovering one of her dad’s guilty pleasures and imagines how he might have listened to it quietly at night.

In a noisy era of streaming libraries, trendy headphones and smart shuffles, music listening and discovery have become solitary practices. But the music she can hold in her hand, Jula says, invites her to pause and fully engage with the experience. Whether she’s crocheting or working on a puzzle, it’s when she flips a record or hears the subtle interruptions caused by the scratches and physicality of the album that she’s reminded to reconnect with the music — and with her father.

In that way, @soundwavesoffwax feels like an act of preservation, Jula said, of both her father’s memory and sharing music as he always intended: for thousands to hear.

“In a way, I’m doing that for him and with him, which is, like, the most beautiful way for me to process this,” she said. “His spirit is holding me in this time, and is just cheering and dancing with what I’m doing with what he has left.”

—Janay Kingsberry, The Washington Post

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.