8 posts tagged “loss”

Relevant in so many ways...  Today would have been my grandfather's 70th birthday, if he lived to see it.  And just as I was at a concert as he was passing slowly on, I will be at this band's show in 15 hours...  For every loss, death or heartbreak, this speaks to me now.

Lights in the Sky - The Slip - NIN

Everyone has a relationship, where things fluctuate, where things ebb and flow...  And yet, it's meant to be.  Or so you think. 

But life has a way of upending things, of turning them on their heads and making yours spin into oblivion.  Life has a way of leaving you standing alone, clinging to desperate wanting, desperate inner pleas inside your mind.  You feel, so clearly, that to part will forever haunt you both.  But there you are, turning around slowly and walking away from the one thing you wanted to hold onto, the one thing that mattered.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - The Scientist

Everyone wants to erase and rewind.  Everyone wants that second chance.  Sometimes, people just aren't willing to choose it.  They say if you love something, you set it free;  if it's meant to be yours, it will return again.  I have never set someone free before with that aspiration, with that intent.  When I have set someone free, it is usually because I cannot give them what they need or deserve, or they cannot ever measure up for me, so to string them along is cruelty.  I have tasted the bitterness of setting free someone you would shackle yourself to, if you believed it would be a fruitful way to hang on to their light, and there is nothing worse.  It taints everything:  food, drink, sleep.  You look in the mirror with loathing, with incredulous eyes wondering how you could do such a thing.

Logan & Veronica - Epic

Love isn't supposed to be sunshine and kittens,  It isn't supposed to be blissful and easy.  Love - true love, enduring love - is work.  Love is loving the flaws, and not merely criticizing but wanting, more than anything, to watch another person grow to become the potential within, that dream they are afraid to reach out and take hold of.  After all, no one writes songs about the ones that come easy. 

But one person cannot work alone.  The pyramids were not built by a single person, and nor is a good love.  It's foolish to believe that you can hold the weight of the world upon your shoulders and not break your back eventually, no longer able to stand from the agony of that loneliness.

Sometimes, to understand what we have, we must lose it, or risk that loss.  My only wish now, is for understanding.

Veronica Mars: I Hope Your Heart Runs Empty (LoVe)

It always comes back to music for me.

Music is my soundtrack to all of life's events, both trivial and tantamount to shaping who have become and am becoming.  Music fuels me when nothing else can motivate me to keep pressing forward.  Music makes me laugh, and cry.  Music is cathartic, especially live.  As Third Eye Blind once sang, "The four right chords could make me cry." 

Music is there, even when it's 4am and no one's answering their phone or online.  Music is fun and silly, and intelligent and challenging.  Music can evoke a mood, or change it for the better.

Music is my oxygen.

Music can also take me back, certain songs triggering memories so succinctly that they feel real again, feel as if the events were unfolding right this moment.  I can close my eyes and remember it all:  the way I felt, how cold or warm I was, who was there and what we did.  Certain lyrics will forever affect me, forever connect to certain people or places.  Such is the case with Pictures of Success by Rilo Kiley.  In late 2007, I suddenly found myself feeling suffocated by life, by my failed aspirations, by my own mood swings, and by the illnesses in my family, namely my grandfather and father.  I had to escape.  I had to leave town and recharge completely.

In the end, with a lot of luck, as if the universe understood what I was in need of, I found myself in California right before my birthday, and spent the actual day slinging back margaritas with some of my best friends in the world on a patio in Tijuana.  It was perfect weather for me - late spring temperatures for my home city, with sunny skies and breeze.  Everything about that trip was exactly as I wanted it to be.  In the entire month of November, I'd blared Pictures of Success over and over, as if willing the fates to work out, singing along:  "They say California is a recipe for a black hole/And I say I've got my best shoes on/I'm ready to go..."  And I was ready.  I walked away from that trip in late December, turning to my boyfriend and saying, "That was what I needed.  I feel strong again.  I feel ready to cope now." 

That was December 17th, 2007.  By December 1st, 2008, my foreboding feelings over my grandfather had proven terribly true, with my grandfather going from back pain to heart attack to cancer to terminal to passing away.  So much can happen in a year, much more than we ever anticipate.  I dare not consider how well I would have handled that year without that time in the sun, to breathe in the ocean air and revive myself. 

And even now, as I miss him terribly, that song drifts into my head, to remind me of that strength I found.  I wish I had a plane ticket now;  I'm definitely ready to go, once more. 

Dedicated to my Nanny....

This Is Not Goodbye - Melissa Etheridge

"At first the melody would come and walk with me through the mists in North Cornwall England. I would take this melody back to the Hammond Organ, the B3. I would sit and play with this for hours. Soon I began to have to deal with my mother's heart condition and she survived a cardiac arrest in September. Because of this I began thinking about the life cycle and that dying is part of the life cycle. Even though I realized this, logically, I couldn't accept the idea of losing my mother emotionally. The song started to become clearer as the days went by and I began to realize that the Beekeeper that had taken my character in the song, to death, to plead for my mother's life, the Queen Bee in the song, little did I know that although my mother would survive and that death did pass her by it would be the last time I saw my brother when I went back to stand by my mother's bedside. So life/death has it's own rhythm and it's own rhyme. The Beekeeper really acts as a Shaman, similar to the Medicine Man in the Native American tradition. We have the Beekeeper in the Celtic tradition"

Tori Amos - MSN Chat 2/22/05

I understand now, more than before, now that the proverbial wolf is finally right outside my door, just how much the soul can ache to travel to the keepers.  How great the longing is to offer every exchange, including one's own life, to spare the loss of one so beloved. 

This is my bargaining stage.  This is me asking for time to stand still, to wait, to slow down.  This is me not ready.  This is my rage at life's cycle, despite a long-term respect of nature borne of my personal beliefs, storming the castle gates and insisting I will not relinquish my King.

The Beekeeper - Tori Amos