Finishing unfinished business
Candice’s post yesterday (in part) about doing things our loved ones would’ve done because they no longer can struck a chord with me. Part of it, for me, is feeling that nudge of duty to live well in their honor and sometimes, in their stead. Part of it is that these are things we would’ve shared, at least conversationally, and doing them now stretches the thread between that life and this one out a little longer, which is a small comfort to me. And part of it is that I am genuinely interested in many of the things he introduced me to, so in that way, his legacy truly lives on through me.
There are some things he and I planned to do that I don’t think I’ll ever do without him. He and I were going to walk the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end. We were going to take the Barbary Coast walking tour of San Francisco, and see the new fire museum in the old mint when the museum opened…in 2009. We were going to go to the Healdsburg Guitar Festival together. Other than the last one, I don’t think I want to do those things with anyone else, or by myself, but perhaps in time I will change my mind, as I have on other things I was never going to be able to do after he died.
Like going to Big Basin. He was going to take me there to see the redwoods. He was what brought me there, ultimately, but only because that’s where they scattered his ashes. I needed to see the place, despite the wrongness of my being there alone. But not all events I’ve gone to alone were as emotionally perilous as that trip.
I’ve attended quite a few concerts in the last 2 years that I might not have gone to if A were still alive. One was an Allison Krauss concert I’d hoped he’d attend with me, but he didn’t live long enough to do so. I went to see Dave Mason, whom I had a passing interest in since A introduced me to him; if not for A, I would’ve never been there. But if he were alive, I wouldn’t have wasted an evening I could’ve been talking to him at a concert of passing interest. Of course, once he passed, I had ridiculous amounts of time to fill. God, the days and nights were so long then. I am grateful that my life has since filled in the spaces and my nights seem too short again.
Tomorrow night I’m going to a theatre showing of Concert for Bangladesh. I had bought the deluxe version of the DVD for A’s last birthday present; I ordered it on Valentine’s day. If you don’t know about the Concert for Bangladesh, it was a benefit concert organized by George Harrison, lately, (at the time) of a mildly successful outfit called The Beatles. The film had been mired in lawsuits dating back to the original concert, and the money earned by it was tied up for over 30 years.
A was thrilled with his birthday gift, and was watching it when our chat time came around that night. He was surprised to find he was deeply touched by George’s youth in the film; it moved him to tears and sniffles, he told me, that he was so young there, and now he was gone.
I never bought it for myself, though I wanted to see it. I figured he and I would watch it together at some point. I never imagined that 4 months later he’d be gone.
So tomorrow night I will go and see it on the big screen, as he did when it came out the year after I was born. And with that, I will finish another bit of business left undone when he left me so suddenly. Some of these things I do because he’d want to; some of these things I do to allow some of those incomplete plans to come to some kind of conclusion, instead of being left hanging, frustrated, forever after. Sometimes it’s a bit of both.
This past Sunday night, I attended a double bill of Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys, and there were connections to A in both shows for me. He’d seen Los Lobos with his buddies around Christmastime. I remember the timing, because I was home baking cookies that night, playing Los Lobos in the kitchen in musical solidarity. We are/were both frequent concert-goers, and whenever he went to one, I’d listen to the same act to "be there" with them. I often wished we could go to more shows together, but the distance and the fact that his best buddies were his steady show dates kept it just a wish. We did see a couple together. I went there to see Duran Duran with him; when he was here, we saw Santana, which was very much like a trip to Mecca for a couple of guitar junkies. And when we went to concerts separately, we e-mailed our reviews of the shows to each other the next morning. I saw KT Tunstall in Phoenix the day after he’d seen her in San Franciscio, and we compared notes. When my beloved Beatles fan finally got to see Sir Paul, he called my phone 4 times from the concert floor, just so I could hear the crowd and Sir Paul playing in the background. I thought he was so sweet to make such an effort to share with me. I was freshly devastated when Sprint automatically deleted those messages.
A had seen Los Lonely Boys in May at a festival in San Francisco. When he died, I had a ticket to a Los Lonely Boys stuck to my bulletin board for a show in August, just short of a month from when he’d passed. The show was at the same venue where we’d seen Santana, and while I hated to waste the ticket, I just wasn’t prepared to go back to that venue alone, with my last memory of being there including him at my side. Hell, I wasn’t prepared to leave the house yet at that point. Every day I would drag myself to work and back home, which is the only place I wanted to be, hiding out in bed if I could manage it. It took 2 years for LLB to come back, and by then I’d seen a few concerts at that venue, and like everything else that was once too hard to face, it got easier each time.
But of course, he’s always there. I found myself surprised to realize that both Sunday night’s concerts had a connection to him. I have to say that while that’s often bittersweet, it is more sweet than bitter now. I like that he’s everywhere. I like that I can find whispers and traces of him everywhere I turn in my life and my thoughts. It is testament to how much we shared with each other, and how deeply we were intertwined, despite the brevity of our time together in this world. We were here, together, and the experience changed both of us deeply. We were, and are, real, as is the love that continues between us.