The news about the passing of a long-time musician-friend has gotten me into a weird vibe as of late. For one, the news reached us while we were already onstage right before we started our first set.
As I recall, it had also been only a few months ago, we were likewise on the same stage when we heard the news about another fellow musician who had died.
Think what you will, but hearing about our two friends dying several months apart, and hearing the news minutes before we were to play, ironically, at the very same venue we performed at (sometimes) together for many years, had me lost and dizzy for a while.
In fact, during the first set, a few songs had already gone by and my mind was still on those two guys who once shared the stage with us.
Also for a time, every request slip carried on the stage that night had me thinking weirdly, oh no, is it bearing bad news again?
The tech guy who earlier gave us the news had cited Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” before nonchalantly reminding us, we were getting old already so that, in a sing-song voice, he followed it up with Santa’s carol of “You better watch out…”
All in good fun,:of course. With that said, now you’ve an idea how dark our humor is, among musicians. I don’t know, perhaps trying to make light of the news, cushions us in a way, almost the same as whistling in the dark takes our mind off things.
I even believe the brain automatically sends out pad-me-down enzymes to momentarily shock us whenever there’s very bad or traumatic news.
I will always remember my very first experience with a death in the family. My maternal grandmother passed away when we were still in grade school.
While my two elder siblings (who were in their late teens then) took her death with so much grief being closest to her, I let my own fear of ghosts become the dominant feeling. As a child then, that had overtaken any sense of sorrow or loss.
It was only when my favorite aunt had died years later, when I really felt grief and death’s reeling blow, and hadn’t changed a bit with each loss in the family.
In a way, we’re shielded a bit when death happens outside our family circle. Within friends, I’ve always tried convincing myself that eventually things will be better for everyone.
Yet, with family members, friends and many acquaintances leaving so soon, I have, time and again, realized I’ve failed in grandly convincing myself that all will be better each time.
Whenever there’s a death close to us, my mother’s words ring in my ears. I remember her saying at our younger brother’s untimely demise: “One never stops grieving over the loss of a son.”
In her lifetime, she had lost two. Like other families, our fallen have included all of our uncles and aunts, grandparents and both our parents. Of my siblings, four have gone ahead. Plus a beloved niece.
Still, that’s not to say that the experience of each loss had made us become numb with death.
Even the brain can’t fool us into making light of one’s sense of loss whenever a friend’s or especially a family member’s time has come.
We even try to evade the topic of death altogether, as though wishing in a morbid way, it moves on further to choose another neighborhood.
The thing is, I’ve no qualms with dying really. What I hate is, in death, one will dearly miss most the times you have had with your departed ones. The permanence of it all is what really kills.
