Week 14

punchback

Grief has been throwing some serious punches in the last couple of weeks.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck it out ringside through these brutal rounds.

Although I am regularly reminded of the importance of surrender (god I hate that word) and acceptance (not a great one either) and often work towards both of those, sometimes I just feel like throwing a few punches of my own. No surprise there.

Let’s start with a left hook powered by the blue sky. There it is, up above us, a beautiful dome. OK, it’s not always blue, but that makes the blue times even better. And when you get away from the fug of a city, you can find that insane cobalt color, electric in its saturation. It doesn’t banish the grief, but a sky like that can right size it. No matter how big the hole in my heart is, the blue sky is bigger.

Speaking of, then there is “Blue Sky.”

Allman Brothers. 1972.

Two guitars, Allman and Betts, sometimes dancing up and down the frets on their own, sometimes swirling up and down those scales in perfect harmony. I was lucky enough to hit adolescence just about when Southern rock became a thing: Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, CCR. It was a nice reprieve and all from the east coast folkie stuff, but “Blue Sky” became an anthem, next level as they say.

It’s a love song. Written by a dude. Played by dudes. Who also excel at road songs so of course, “Blue Sky” became one of Richard and my favorite road trip songs. We would roll down the windows and sing really loud in the direction of the windshield but really to each other

“You’re my blue sky

You’re my sunny day.

Lord, you know it makes me high

When you turn your love my way.

Turn your love my way.”

I hear that song and it’s like a knock out punch. It makes me cry too so there’s that, but it’s a kind of furious crying like a, (pardon me), a “fuck-you-grief: look-what-I-remember -that-you-can-never-take-from-me” crying. Anyway. Blue sky, guitars, road trip. Things that can beat up pretty good on grief and remind me we really did have so much together. A “real fine love” to quote another amazing love song written by a dude

Love, passion, rage: all hot. Grief is stone cold. Concrete cold. Bone cold.

Memories of warm can help me duck or dodge a punch sometimes. Not warm memories mind you, memories of actual warmth.

Here’s a couple snapshots (they would have been more useful to all of us back in January but I wasn’t really conscious back then)

2020: Pandemic. The dog never had it so good. Long long walks with both of us as we tracked the coming of spring, which is not a slow dance in Chicago, mind you. It’s a very long (cold) slouch against a (concrete) gymnasium wall followed by an explosive Clash song. I remember where we were (Bryn Mawr and Glenwood in front of the vacant Peirce Elementary School) when we caught it. The real stuff. That sun on our backs had some punch to it. We were almost too warm inside our coats. One of us said to the other “feel that?” and the other said “yep.” And we knew we were talking about the warm.

Or try this one out:

Our discovery of the miracle of heated seats. We were buying a new car and really it was only the heavy duty floor mats we wanted but the dealer said,

“Oh you want the weather package.”

To which we may have looked askance in each other’s direction and said quietly,

“We know what weather is, but a package of it?”

We always found the same things funny.

So yes:

Heated seats.

Revolutionary.

The almost complete annihilation of those first five (or ten depending on the age of your car) minutes of freezing agony in the car during the winter months. We never stopped thrilling to this late in life addition to our warmth collection.

And of course the usual: bed on Sunday morning, sunshine on wet backs after a swim, a mug of coffee in cold hands, a chilly kid climbing onto a cold lap and the miracle of human heat that ensues.

And finally, this one sounds all symbolic but really it was a physical warmth running down my back when, after a long shitty day at work I would call you or you would call me so we could state the obvious to each other: we were on our way home and happy to be heading that way. Warm.

I’m still duking it out here:

This is what I get for my grief?

Silence.

Yep, this is what I get.

Silence.

Surrender. Acceptance. Yeah, yeah.

I still won this bout.