I Hope You're My Song
I am a big fan of the soon-to-be concluded NBC series This Is Us. In the golden age of streaming it has been rarer and rarer to find a network show so good. And with one episode to go it is doing the not-so-easy task of ending things perfectly. A lot of very good shows don't stick the landing when it comes to the finale. This one would have to really screw up in their final act because so far it's been nothing but dynamite writing and performances.
The penultimate episode really grabbed me. For those who don't know the show, know this much: A key character, the mother/matriarch of the family the show follows, is dying from Alzheimer's. She is on her death bed and crossing over. The episode took us into that space and I love what they did with it. No one can truly fact-check crossing over or the afterlife so I imagine it gives writers a lot to play with and they did a really nice job. The character, Rebecca, has a lifelong fascination or dream of a long train ride. So with guidance from a spirit (a character who passed in Season One) she makes her way from train car to train car, seeing her children at various ages of their life, and encountering other people she has loved in the course of her life. All through the journey she has fear and trepidation but also has that realization I hope we all have that everything dies and all we really take with us is what we loved. That is a simplification, I know, but nothing else goes with us but memory and experience.
Mostly I just loved the train imagery and how they used it to be the comfortable space where Rebecca leaves this plane and goes wherever we go. Heaven? The atmosphere? The stars? To the sea? Again, no one can say definitely but I think we all hope that if we die naturally, comfortably and with peace then final we go down in our minds and hearts is one of comfort. I watched the episode last night and all through today it stuck with me. I am approaching age 49 and while know or at least hope I have decades left here I also know that my time is far more than likely half over. I also have an aging parent and my partner has one, too, and we've both lost a parent in the last few years so these things do enter the stream of thoughts in ways they didn't in my 30's or even in my early 40's. Such is the way of things, I suppose. First we lose people and then we care for people and eventually we wonder who will care for us and when our time will be up. And if you're anything like me you don't want to obsess over it too soon but maybe instead wonder from time to time how your cross over will go. That's what This Is Us did to me all day today.
I thought of Rebecca's train and then I thought of where my spirit would find itself when my spirit is between the living and the next. And this will shock no one who knows me but I thought of a record store. Not a huge one of the warehouse style (though I like those), not too cozy or cramped, but instead one with many rows of old CDs, record, tapes, and 8 tracks. I thought of my spirit entering such a place, browsing and discovering that everything in stock is familiar to me, intimate to me, and somehow tied to my life. I see listening stations that let me grab the John Denver Greatest Hits 8-track and putting it on. That would be where I feel myself in a car on a winding road, wedged in the back seat between my brother and sister. I flip through another bin and there is King of Rock by Run-DMC and I am my siblings and I am both comforted by them and how they were the ones who played me my first rap record. In the 'clearance' bin is one of those "Best of the Power Ballads" CDs and it's loaded with Kix and Saigon Kick and these other melodies that served as a backdrop for when my heart first really got filled to the brim with romantic love. There are Jayhawks albums, Replacements albums, silly early 2000 rock that my sons went crazy for. And each thing I browse is not a reminder of how many songs I loved -- though I will miss those songs -- but about the people I loved those songs with or because of.
I hear Paul Simon's Graceland and it scares me in that space because I know it is my father telling me I have to go. That it's time to leave the store because I can't stay there forever. The comfort of songs that healed me when I truly experienced massive loss for the first time at age 42 are there again in my time of having to exit. Yet I still need one thing, one song, one last piece of what I am either leaving behind or walking toward depending on how fate plays out.
In this 2022 moment of day dreaming I thought about how the cinematic version of this plays out for me. And at least for today and for how my life and my wishes and best hopes go I hope it goes like this: The door to the store opens, she walks in, and "Throw Your Arms Around Me" plays and I smile.
"Ya know, this version of this song that we both love isn't even the original," I say.
"I know," she says, "You told me that many times. Many, many times."
"I won't need to tell you anymore will I?" I ask.
She smiles and shakes her head and even though we didn't dance all that much along our way we do until the song is over. She takes my hand and, again, depending on fate, we walk out that door together or she leads me to it. Either way, she is the last song I hear.
J
The penultimate episode really grabbed me. For those who don't know the show, know this much: A key character, the mother/matriarch of the family the show follows, is dying from Alzheimer's. She is on her death bed and crossing over. The episode took us into that space and I love what they did with it. No one can truly fact-check crossing over or the afterlife so I imagine it gives writers a lot to play with and they did a really nice job. The character, Rebecca, has a lifelong fascination or dream of a long train ride. So with guidance from a spirit (a character who passed in Season One) she makes her way from train car to train car, seeing her children at various ages of their life, and encountering other people she has loved in the course of her life. All through the journey she has fear and trepidation but also has that realization I hope we all have that everything dies and all we really take with us is what we loved. That is a simplification, I know, but nothing else goes with us but memory and experience.
Mostly I just loved the train imagery and how they used it to be the comfortable space where Rebecca leaves this plane and goes wherever we go. Heaven? The atmosphere? The stars? To the sea? Again, no one can say definitely but I think we all hope that if we die naturally, comfortably and with peace then final we go down in our minds and hearts is one of comfort. I watched the episode last night and all through today it stuck with me. I am approaching age 49 and while know or at least hope I have decades left here I also know that my time is far more than likely half over. I also have an aging parent and my partner has one, too, and we've both lost a parent in the last few years so these things do enter the stream of thoughts in ways they didn't in my 30's or even in my early 40's. Such is the way of things, I suppose. First we lose people and then we care for people and eventually we wonder who will care for us and when our time will be up. And if you're anything like me you don't want to obsess over it too soon but maybe instead wonder from time to time how your cross over will go. That's what This Is Us did to me all day today.
I thought of Rebecca's train and then I thought of where my spirit would find itself when my spirit is between the living and the next. And this will shock no one who knows me but I thought of a record store. Not a huge one of the warehouse style (though I like those), not too cozy or cramped, but instead one with many rows of old CDs, record, tapes, and 8 tracks. I thought of my spirit entering such a place, browsing and discovering that everything in stock is familiar to me, intimate to me, and somehow tied to my life. I see listening stations that let me grab the John Denver Greatest Hits 8-track and putting it on. That would be where I feel myself in a car on a winding road, wedged in the back seat between my brother and sister. I flip through another bin and there is King of Rock by Run-DMC and I am my siblings and I am both comforted by them and how they were the ones who played me my first rap record. In the 'clearance' bin is one of those "Best of the Power Ballads" CDs and it's loaded with Kix and Saigon Kick and these other melodies that served as a backdrop for when my heart first really got filled to the brim with romantic love. There are Jayhawks albums, Replacements albums, silly early 2000 rock that my sons went crazy for. And each thing I browse is not a reminder of how many songs I loved -- though I will miss those songs -- but about the people I loved those songs with or because of.
I hear Paul Simon's Graceland and it scares me in that space because I know it is my father telling me I have to go. That it's time to leave the store because I can't stay there forever. The comfort of songs that healed me when I truly experienced massive loss for the first time at age 42 are there again in my time of having to exit. Yet I still need one thing, one song, one last piece of what I am either leaving behind or walking toward depending on how fate plays out.
In this 2022 moment of day dreaming I thought about how the cinematic version of this plays out for me. And at least for today and for how my life and my wishes and best hopes go I hope it goes like this: The door to the store opens, she walks in, and "Throw Your Arms Around Me" plays and I smile.
"Ya know, this version of this song that we both love isn't even the original," I say.
"I know," she says, "You told me that many times. Many, many times."
"I won't need to tell you anymore will I?" I ask.
She smiles and shakes her head and even though we didn't dance all that much along our way we do until the song is over. She takes my hand and, again, depending on fate, we walk out that door together or she leads me to it. Either way, she is the last song I hear.
J