COMPOSER SABRINA PENA YOUNG | MUSIC TECHNOLOGY | FILM | CLASSICAL | OPERA

When I created As I Lay  my grandmother, mi Abuelita , lay dying in hospice. I had visited her the day before, with my sister visiting from Ohio, coming to say her last goodbyes. I let them have that final embrace, that final hug. I never gave her one. I didn't realize that would be my last chance to truly say goodbye to her.  I was foolishly working on a second master's degree at FIU. I had earned an MM in Music Technology and thought that an MFA in film and video would prepare me for a life as an academic traversing between visual and performing arts. I didn't realize that the economy would collapse, that professorships as a means of survival would soon end but for the select few, and that life had a different path for me entirely that existed almost entirely online as I moved from state to state with my then new husband. I had skipped a lot of school to be with my grandmother that semester. She had been an integral part of our family, the kind ready with deli...