Learning to Let Go
Today started out as any other.
Halfway through the day, I remembered it was the 16th anniversary of the day I lost my little brother. David.
Mom had reminded me the day before, otherwise, honestly I might have remembered, and I might have not. I’m not really good with dates, but I am good with feelings. With stories. With shadows that trigger memories.
The day didn’t go as planned, which can be glorious — if you let it. I tried. I plugged my way through work as a distraction. My meeting at a studio to discuss my next project was canceled. Tomorrow is always there. Ha. I went to my practice. Yoga, meditation, a run. Nope. A beer. Ok.
Lara and I went to see a recommended singer-songwriter at a somewhat other worldly place called Trail Dust Town, a fake western town in the middle of Tucson that I have never heard of. Pardner. A decent chuckwagon style meal, a decent singer and songwriter, a likable guy in a likable imitation opera house. A couple of his songs made me pay attention. A beer. Ok.
During one of his songs, I thought of the song I wrote for my brother. Wildwater. At the time I wrote it, I had basically busied myself out of grief for 10 years, then Graves, my brother’s best friend — my friend, and his family drove up from Alabama for Thanksgiving. We ate. We drank. We told stories. We laughed. We drank. We did things my little brother would have done.
I woke with a 3 day hangover from booze and emotion and picked up the guitar. I wrote Wildwater in pretty much a 48 hour session. Underneath the song lyrics, I wrote: “11/29/16 I’m crying as a write this song. I played the chords until my middle finger is numb and I’m worried that I’ve damaged a nerve. I think the wonderful visit by Graves and his family has brought me to memories that I haven’t touched for a long time. We laughed and told stories. As I near the last lines I feel like David needs me to write this to set him free. To set me free. To have the grieving that I haven’t allowed myself.”
I came away with one of the best songs I’ve written. But more importantly, I cracked and shattered a wall that was keeping me from taking the first step. Acceptance.
David was an avid outdoors person and spent a lot of time on the water. Fishing, hunting, canoeing. The theme of water in the song is a nod to that, but I also recognize now, that the water is impermanent and moving. It is feezing and thawing. It is freeing. Like life, like death.
My song “Highway Meets the Sky” on my new album is the songwriter taking another step, further down the path, not just toward acceptance but toward celebration and towards unattachment. In one of the verses, thinking of my Uncle Pat, David’s hero, I wrote;
“My uncle tellin’ stories, points at the sky,
he said that’s where we all go when we die
He said heaven is just a memory away
and I worked hard everyday, and that’s how I want you to remember me”
Yes! Remember me, but don’t’ cling to me like moss on desperate driftwood. (Whatever, Todd.)
When I was talking with Mom on the phone yesterday about the passing of my lovely aunt and the plans for a remembrance. I said, well, I guess ceremonies bring closure. She was a bit irritated and said there is no closure, that’s just what they tell people when they are sad and don’t know better — or something along those lines. I apologized. Sometimes our brains are just reflex organs, spitting habitual platitudes like a kid chewing sunflower seeds and spitting the hulls in the dust. Upon reflection, what I meant is events, like ceremonies are just steps on the way to getting both closer to the feelings and farther from the attachment, farther from the pain.
I damn sure don’t know the secret to any of it, and the only promise I can make to you is I won’t speak in riddles or waste metaphors anymore. I’m just going to sing to the ghost chorus in this moment
