"Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passing by"
I was told The News by someone who wouldn't know the effect it would
have on me, only that I was a Deadhead and did I hear...
I didn't know what to do with myself...I was at work, with noone
nearby that I could go to for comfort. I ended up going out to my
car and putting in a tape and driving to a "nice" spot to listen...
as ever, the Grateful Dead mysterious magic pervaded...
when I returned home from work that night, it was the first time that
I could let myself really go - my partner was in the kitchen (he is
also a Deadhead) and we just embraced eachother for a long time.
Neither of us had much of an appetite, but we have 3 children so we
fed them dinner. Afterwards, with a Jerry tribute playing on the
radio, I noticed Guntis outside by himself with tears streaming down his
cheeks. "Standing on the Moon" was playing -
"a lovely view of heaven, but I'd rather be with you"...
I live in N.H. - which is where Bob Weir was still going to put on a
show that night, maybe an hour and a half away from home. We were
going to head out there, but still sitting outside crying together,
when a friend of our's from Massachusetts showed up - she too had
planned on going to Hampton Beach but stopped by our house first.
Well, as it turned out, we never left our deck, but stayed out there
together to watch the moon rise.
How many people in the world that night poured out their love to Jerry
as they watched that full moon rise? It must have been an incredible
amount of energy.
we sat out on our deck and watched the moon. When it was directly in
the center of the sky, and the sky was completely clear all around, we
suddenly noticed wispy clouds surrounding the moon - the only clouds
in the sky - and they surrounded the moon in the shape of a StealYourFace, right
down to the eyesockets at the bottom part, with the moon instead of the
lightning bolt. All 3 of us saw it - it
was just so amazing - and it stayed like that for probably a half hour
or more. Not another cloud in the sky, and these clouds never moved
from that shape.
that was pretty cool - I definately took that as a message
from Jer...
The next day, on my way to work, I stopped at a florist and bought a
single longstemmed red rose. On my desk, I set up a little memorial of
sorts - I had the rose and I had some pictures of the band and Jerry, my
head plugged into my Walkman listening to them play and sing (all songs
taking on significant new meanings now) -
things that I could look at and listen to during the day, because I was mourning a
family member even though that wouldn't be understood by the people I
worked with.
My immediate reaction was denial - it can't be true - but
then it hit me...
like a brick...
to the stomach.
the very first song I started up in the middle of was Terrapin ->
"storyteller has no choice...soon you will not hear his voice..."
the healing power of words and music,.. and tears...
I completely lost my appetite and couldn't sleep very well for at least a couple weeks. At night I would lay awake in bed just visualizing Jerry, finally fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, only to wake up a few hours later, immediately thinking of him again. My body just reacted this way - there was nothing I could do about it. It made me realize that I had really lost someone very close to me, even though I had never met him.
a week or so later, I went on vacation. I was still in pretty bad shape, still so sad. We were camping next to a beautiful, peaceful river, with not many other people around. Every morning, I would walk to the riverbank and meditate. I needed help to get past the pain.
the most profound thing that happened to me occurred during one of my daily meditations. At one point I started to talk to Jerry, cause I saw him. And I said "this is so cool that we can communicate like this now" - and he started LAUGHING! - and shaking his head, he said to me something like "yeah this is pretty cool".
I thought, now I have a personal connection to the spirit world, like I never did with anyone else before. This connection is there because I'm so focused on that man. He meant SO much to me.
I haven't had anything like that happen since, but what that did was to help me get over my deep grief and not feel so bad anymore. Jerry somehow had let me know he's happy where he is.
At the end of my vacation, we headed up to northern Vermont for the
annual Bread and Puppet Resurrection Circus - a very weird and wonderful
event which attracts many, many deadheads every year. I was getting
together with many of my Dead "family" for the first time since his
death. One night, around the campfire, a friend of ours was playing
his guitar and singing. We requested a Jerry song - and he played
"Ripple". The whole big group of us there, every one of us, sang
that song with all our hearts and souls and it was just so very
healing.
A powerful moment that I won't forget.
The next morning, I sat next to the fire upon waking. Someone across from me was blowing a didgeridoo across the fire into my body, it seemed. My daughter stood behind me doing a hairwrap for me, so I was captive there for a while, feeling that deep heart-stirring sound.. gifts from the musician and my daughter. I kept the hairwrap in my hair for about a year, as a living memorial to Jerry. It developed into quite a serious dreadlock on top, but still, I kept it because it meant something to me.
I had tickets to all the Boston shows that would have been in September - I got the ones for the 2nd series the day before Jerry died. They were to be the last musical event in the Boston Garden before it was torn down. The tickets for the last night had the words "We're gonna tear this old building down" on them (they knew!). I was so thrilled that day to get tickets, especially to that show. And the next day, I was so terribly sad. Anyways, I sent in for my refund and GDTS offered to send the voided tickets back if you requested. I received the tickets along with the beautifully printed elegy Hunter wrote for Jerry. I matted and framed them together, along with some pictures of Jerry, and created a little memorial area on a wall in my living room. (right near the tapes ;-))
One year after Jerry died, my family took a trip to the west coast - we were there during the weeks that spanned Jerry's birthday and the anniversary of his death.
We spent 3 days in San Francisco (my first time ever).
As you might imagine, I loved Loved LOVED San Francisco.
The day after the Furthur festival at Shoreline was the day I tried
to catch some 60's vibes by exploring the Haight. (Guntis went
halibut fishing, so it was just me and my kids). Lazed around
the grass in the Golden Gate Park for quite a bit, then drove to
the Panhandle and parked there. Walked up Ashbury and hung around
the intersection and down Haight for a while. I had made a copy of
one of the famous pictures of the original Dead
standing at/hanging off of the street post on the corner, and figured, with 5 in my
family, that we could pose exactly the same way. But there were
only 4 of us there that day...ah well.
Then we walked up the couple of blocks to 710. Noone else around. Gazed at this house I've seen so many pictures of...sat on the stoop...took pictures. My kids suggested I cut some of the "Jerry memorial" hairwrap off, and leave it there.. and I decided it did feel right to do that. So, my kids helped me with a ritual of cutting off some of the tiny braid wrapped in colored threads, and we carefully hid it in some ferns along the steps.
That was the day before Jerry's birthday - just couldn't make it into
the city that day - as we were packing up our camp and headed to
Yosemite. On the way, we stopped in a road side flower stand and
Guntis bought a dozen red roses (for $3.00!)...
happy birthday Jerry.
I did have a beautiful poignant moment as I sat on the rocks next
to the Pacific before we left. I sat and watched huge waves crash
onto the rocks below me, leaving bubbles of foam in their wake.
At one point, it looked as if the foam formed a Jerry face - the
glasses and beard (and a smile on empty space) - and, when I noticed
that, then it looked like it formed hundreds of Jerry faces...and
then they would metamorph into hundreds of skeleton faces, and back.
Cool.
(It brought tears.)
We had a beautiful bouquet for our campsites' picnic tables...and
after the roses died, we set them on the dashboard to dry.
On August 9, my family walked to a secluded spot on the river we
were camped at. Guntis took the dried roses and waded into the
middle of the river, and ceremoniously hit the water with the flowers.
The dried petals and leaves fell off and floated away. I sang
"Ripple". Then my daughters cut off the rest
of the hairwrap on my head (and saved it for just the perfect place
to leave it). That night, Lara and I were standing
in the field and looking at the sky at constellations. Just as
we were looking up, a huge shooting star went from one end of our
horizon to the other, leaving a trail...;-) ...
Fare thee well, Jerry.
It wasn't until I was in the rainforest of the Olympic peninsula when I found the perfect place to leave the 2nd half of the hairwrap. I wrapped it in the picture of the street-sign-hangin' Boyz that I had cut out, wrote about my living memorial to Jerry on it, put it in a bottle and hid it in the hollow of a big ol' moss covered tree off the beaten path in the forest. Wonder if anyone will ever find it!
I have found that writing has been an important way of working through my grief. If you would like to comment on similar experiences you had, or rituals you went through in your grief, I would welcome your mail to debess@tellink.net
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"I will take you HOME."