Nova Ahead 5

Grieving is weird, and to be honest with you, I’ve always tried to avoid it. Growing up, I sloughed off generational traditions and value systems that I didn’t identify with: blind allegiance and obedience to country, church, and the law, even a terse yankee racism that no one would ever overtly name. But one thing I kept was the stubborn coldness of pushing through potential trauma with an unquestioning stoicism. I was certainly encouraged to feel, but when things got too heavy, I just put my head down and moved on. So now, decades later than would have been ideal, I’m looking at grief; and it looks like just in time. We are all now facing a formidable tower of loss, and if it isn’t grieving a person that has died, then it is the loss of our lives before the pandemic. I’m still, somehow, moderately optimistic that we’ll be hugging and touring again before too long, but there is still a lot that is irrevocably gone.

Some of what I’ve been addressing in therapy (folks, if you don’t currently have a therapist, I couldn’t recommend it more; the world would be a better place if everyone had access to counseling) is grief that I had just locked away and ignored. The traumatic loss of a close friend is nothing to shake a stick at, but there are other more slippery things that go with it. There is an identity that I had, that had been cultivated and reinforced throughout my life with this person, and when they were gone from this physical plain, a rather large portion of who I was disappeared too. That seems like a serious thing to consider, but I just punched it into the future, shredding beers and howling at the moon like an idiot. There were parts of me that hurt so much that I abandoned them as well, not realizing that these were likely necessary to my functioning properly out in the world. I kind of rushed through the assembly and tossed the instructions and these errant pieces. 

I’ve met folks throughout my life, what I always think of as the second part, that have reminded me of my old self, and I assumed it was only a shadow of something irretrievable. I am realizing that maybe some of these parts are still alive, but just forgotten in the far reaches of my consciousness. There is a loon out on a lake in Rindge whose mournful song will always resonate, and whose call I will always answer. I still leap from the rocks on Champlain with people who I love, each jump defying my fear of drowning. There must be music while I drive so that I can connect the road to my mind and the cinematic sprawl of an inner narrative communicated in the implausible language of the heart. Star Wars and old action movies imprinted on me as a kid, and now provide, through some strange alchemy, a calm sustenance; each installment settles my brain into a stretched out, purring cat. Football and brushfires do the same thing. 

There is a brutal pause that has settled on the world, obfuscating our plans and dreams, even the luxury of ignoring our old, cast aside grief. It’s also loading us all up with new grief, but at the same time, giving us an opportunity to look back and name the unaddressed sadnesses along with this new loss. At one time, trains criss-crossed the country, connecting every town to a wider world, strafing pathways through forests, dynamiting the mountains. Now, we still have trains, but things are markedly different, and those who lived through the shift away from it dealt with their own tragedy and grief at their world moving on, seemingly without them. What remains are renovated depots and in some cases, some very special paths. You can still walk down these avenues, where folks once barreled ahead at one hundred feet per second; now you can take your time, smile at a passing cyclist, notice the shade cooling your summer skin. If you think about it, the grief of the past is memorialized, not in bronze or stone, but in the rail trails of your heart. 

So my suggestion would be, in this time where we can’t be together just yet, is to name what you miss, what you’ve lost, and what you want your future to hold. Give it a soundtrack if that helps. The album that I have been listening to the most, and really continuously since it was released in November of 2018, is State Champion’s Send Flowers. It is a true American country music masterpiece, reflecting far more of our messy, sincere, and confusing reality than the gargling claptrap that passes as country on the radio these days. I recommend putting it on and giving it a good thirty listens, read Ryan Davis’ lyrics; they’re ropes and posts hammered solidly into bedrock, strong enough to withstand the wildest winds, holding the tents of each song in place. Perhaps it will do for you what it has done for me: given another reliable pillar on which to lean, as our train tracks are transformed into heartworn highways before our very eyes.