Another Side to Grief

In the autumn of 1967, my life was entering a most unwelcome yet necessary period of transition. Much due to my own laziness and immaturity, I had managed to earn an academic dismissal from the University of Maryland where my girlfriend and buddies would remain to finish their degrees. Overweight and underachieving, I began my scholastic rehabilitation at a small, anonymous community college. The campus was new and clean, small enough to fit into the confines of the Maryland Terrapins’ spacious football stadium. The buildings were constructed with bricks and pillars in an apparent attempt to make us second-tier students feel that we were attending a real college. Why, there was even a “quad” where the hippies and Viet Nam veterans would eat lunch together, occasionally joining in tense but peaceful political confrontations. No one knew me and I knew no one. And yet, this anonymity would be my friend. The institution and its unassuming students would embrace my mediocrity. I was safe here.

Soon my changes began. I lost weight and gained facial hair. I actually read my text books and passed exams. I discovered I could write and even think. I began to have priorities, to care about the world, other people and my own life. Gradually and unconsciously, my identity was emerging from the primordial swamp like the first creature to walk on land. The dramatic events of the late sixties brought us together with an intensity none of us fully understood at the time. In fact, it was my new group of friends who changed my name, from Richard to Rick. Goodbye mom and dad and the freshly ironed collegiate look of my College Park friends. Hello Woodstock generation.

I met Jean that fall at an extracurricular activity dubbed the “folk music workshop.” Once a week, a large group of young, tie-died men with long hair and young, braless women with even longer hair would gather to strum heavily on guitars and scream familiar tunes. It was not pretty. Talent was not important, only the memorization of chords and lyrics and a certain sixties, anti-war passion for singing loudly.

From amidst this paradoxically raucous group of peaceniks, I noticed her and she noticed me. We could both sing in tune. She knew Mary Travers’ parts and I knew Peter Yarrow’s. She knew Sylvia‘s, I knew Ian‘s. We soon yielded to our musical destiny and became Rick and Jean, stars of the small time.

The coffee house circuit was ours. Friends would follow and support us as we all knocked around the church basements of D.C. The smells of guitar case lining, burnt Maxwell House and flowery incense drew us like the release of a new Dylan album. What a rush it was to have the passion of our words and harmonies met with the energy and enthusiasm arising from candle-lit tables around us. After many of our performances, we and our entourage would often wander down Connecticut Avenue to top off our coffee with cigarettes and imported Loenbrau at the Old Stein. Other nights, we might all gather at someone’s apartment for wine coolers and a hash pipe. When the hour became late and friends became high, these parties could evolve into spontaneous, miniature sing-alongs. Confidence comes from knowing your fans and sharing in a collective inebriation. Or, we might just find our own corner and be with each other. In these dreamy, blurry-eyed states of consciousness, we would sit, face to face, absorbed in the blending of our voices and the touching of our bare feet. It was magic.

Despite the unique intimacy we often shared, Jean and I never really dated. We never had sex. Instead, we would talk, sing, argue and even walk holding hands. Every once in a while, during brief, coincidental lapses in our separate romantic lives, and after several beers and sweaty dancing to Steppenwolf, we might end up on an apartment balcony or a friend’s second-hand sofa, smooching our brains out. Our physical intimacies would always end there, however, and we would tease each other or simply laugh about what might have happened. No, I was always with this or that girlfriend, she was always with this or that guy….usually Glenn. He was awful to her but she remained loyal to him. Damn it.

After completing community college, I went off to finish my degree in Richmond, Virginia and Jean left to live with her sister in Phoenix. She never returned. It wasn’t that her decision was easy or that my frequent late night, long-distance pleading didn’t sway her. On more than one occasion, I nearly had her convinced. She had simply moved on, no doubt finding peace through a geographical distance from her destructive father and ugly reminders of her painful childhood. Over the many years since that fall of 1969, we remained dear friends. Jean flew east to be in my first wedding, I visited her home in Arizona, she once came to experience New England and see our beautiful autumn foliage and, after her first stroke, I would send her money for extras, even cigarettes. After her second stroke, she asked me to be her power of attorney. Her speech had become garbled and hard to understand, hard to hear. About a year later...another autumn, as the colors had mostly fallen to the cold earth and the first flurries blew harmlessly by, Jean suddenly died. Her brother identified himself on a voicemail, asking me to call. Just hearing his name and the tone of his voice, I knew. Although Jean’s car had hit a tree, they believed she was gone before impact. Another stroke. Her third stroke.

I have a cassette tape of a concert we gave on the campus of our former community college. It was the night of the Vietnam demonstration in Washington. You can hear the sound of guitars being strum too hard. You hear the audience at a fever pitch. You can hear the tears in Jean’s voice as she tearfully sang “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” knowing she would be returning to Arizona that next day. It took me several years to listen to that tape....or even play my Peter Paul and Mary cd‘s. I sometimes stare at my old Martin D-18, which I had named after her, and remember all the places that it had traveled with us. I did frame an old photo of the two of us for my wall. But it’s still feels all too new.

I’ve lost both parents and I am estranged from the rest of my family. I learned that Mike, my best high school friend, died much the same way Jean did. He and I had lost touch during my late 60‘s evolution, but I know now that he was a major influence in my life and beloved friend for many years. If I had known that then, I would have worked harder to stay connected, to bridge the gap between pressed khakis and bell-bottomed pants. I lost Annette, my close friend and cohort at Salem Hospital and frequent movie buddy, to cancer...her second bout with cancer. I’ve lost numerous dogs who brought me so much joy and kept me sane. But I don’t think any loss has hit me quite the same way that losing Jean has.

I somehow knew Jean would not live to old age. There had been something sad about her all along. The childhood abuse by her father, her failed marriages, her smoking and, finally, the cruelty inflicted by her imperfect brain cast a dark shadow over her otherwise bright spirit and playful sense of humor. But never did I ever consider that I would not see her again. Never. There was that promised reunion in Phoenix just as soon as a convenient opportunity to travel arose. There was her wish to revisit the splendor of fall foliage denied her by the relentless sameness of the southwest climate. I would talk, she would try to talk. We had always planned to see each other again.

In the thirty three years after Jean moved to Arizona, I think we actually saw each other a total of maybe seven or eight times. We exchanged phone calls maybe twice a year. We always ended with “I love you,” because we did. Over three decades, I have had several best friends, two wives and countless casual and professional relationships of note. I’ve lost touch with many of these people while a few have survived the rough terrain left by life’s changes. Still, with only these few exceptions, they are all living. They’re all out there. Should I wish to, I could call any one of them and say, “Do you remember when…..?”

But with Jean, all that is gone. All those memories. All those conversations. All the back-stage butterflies and rousing applause. All the excitement of just getting it right. I remember one night when admiring fans urged us onto a coffee house stage where we played for two hours in exchange for a few slices of pizza. I remember standing before two thousand people at a Richmond concert and nearly overcome with fear were it not for Jean standing next to me. I remember Jean, upon my telling her that I had located an even older, childhood friend, struggling to enunciate, “I’ve been usurped!”

What is undeniably and excruciatingly true, now, is that I am alone with these memories. I can tell you about these times and you might even find my stories amusing. Jean and I could remind each other of our times together and we could see, hear and even taste the same experience. At the end of the film, “A Mighty Wind,” Mitch and Mickey stand on stage once again. Their sound and presentation coming as naturally to them as a finely tuned dance team. The emotion is in their faces as they seem to avoid eye contact, probably afraid that their feelings will interrupt this perfect moment. I always had that feeling with Jean, even when we just talked, even when I just thought about her.

Shared memories, the magic of any meaningful relationship. The stuff that binds families as they individuate and grow apart. The invisible fabric of the safety net held by people who protect what they have together. When one lets go, that net falls and much of the safety is gone. The memories fall to the ground, never quite the same. This is a side to grief that I had not considered. I was not prepared. We all experience the stages of grief: denial, anger, blah, blah. And at that elusive point where we have come to terms with loss and supposedly found some resolution, there are still proverbial holes left in our proverbial lives. We have said goodbye to the loved ones, but how do we say goodbye to memories?

We don’t. We treasure them. We learn from them. We find greater value in making new memories as they unfold into new safety nets. We hold tight to our own ends, creating a taut but comfortable surface on which each other’s sorrows might land. And magically, until one end might fall, we might use that net as a broad, swaying hammock as we lie there separately, but knowing that we stare at the same clouds as they move gracefully by.