A song came on the radio and suddenly I was seven years old again
Grief doesn't make appointments. Nobody tells you that enough.
You don't get a calendar notification. You're not sitting in a quiet room with a box of tissues, mentally prepared for the wave. You're just driving down the highway somewhere between Missouri and home, windows up, radio on the 70s station, and then Simon and Garfunkel start singing "The Boxer" and suddenly you can't breathe.
That's what happened to me.
We had just come from my father-in-law's memorial in Missouri, then swung north to Indiana to see my side of the family. Long trip. A lot of miles, a lot of emotions that I thought I had already processed and filed away. Then that song came on and it hit me like a hammer. Immediately, right there in the car, I could see it. My dad in his white t-shirt and uncle Pete both kneeling down in the living room, flipping through their albums looking for the next record. Like it was yesterday. Like no time had passed at all.
Carrie had been looking down at the map, making sure we were even headed in the right direction, when she glanced over and saw it happen. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She just put her hand on my arm and left it there. That's the thing about a good marriage. She didn't just witness the wave. She's been living in it right alongside me. She lost her dad too. And here she was, in her own grief, reaching over to steady mine.
I don't know how often this is going to happen or whether it ever fully subsides. Probably neither of those things are mine to know. What I do know is that I have some pretty incredible memories. And I thank God for that. Not everyone gets them. The details alone, the smells, the sounds, the specific way a moment just sits there waiting for you decades later, that's a gift. I don't take it lightly.
Not bad memories. Good ones. That's the thing about grief that nobody really warns you about. Sometimes what breaks you open isn't the loss itself. It's the remembering of all the good stuff.
I grew up in a house full of music. And I mean that literally. My dad and my uncle Pete were both obsessed with sound. Not just any sound. The best sound money could buy. This wasn't Circuit City or some big box electronics store. We went to the stereo store, and when I say that, I mean it the way you'd say "the place" because there was only one that mattered. I can still smell it. That specific combination of carpet, electronics, and whatever they used to polish the wood cabinetry. My brother was too little to come most of the time. My sister had no interest. But me? I was there every time, right alongside my dad and Pete, the two guys I thought were the coolest people on the planet.
And at home, dad had this turntable hanging from the ceiling. Not sitting on a shelf like a normal person. Hanging. Four black decorative chains, the kind you'd see on a ceiling lamp, and there it sat, right up there like it was the centerpiece of the whole house. Which honestly, it kind of was. We weren't poor. Dad worked at the steel mill as a machinist and Pete was a Roller, so there was money coming in. We just didn't have a lot of fancy stuff. The house couldn't have been more than 600 square feet. Now I'm saying that from my seven year old memory, so maybe it was a little bigger. But somehow I doubt it. What I do know is that whatever space we had, the music filled every inch of it.
Whenever they outgrew something or word got out that new equipment had come in, we headed to the stereo store. Pete knew half the salespeople by name. That was his world. Cameras AND stereo equipment, and not the casual kind. The man had standards. The salespeople would see him walk in and they already knew this wasn't going to be a quick visit.
Those listening rooms though. That's what I remember most. These little soundproofed rooms where they'd set up speakers and let you just sit there and listen. I'd wander off on my own sometimes, just a little kid, going from room to room by myself, ears wide open. And whenever I found a pair that stopped me cold, I'd go track down my dad and Pete and drag them back. "You gotta come hear these." And they would come. They would sit down in front of those speakers, close their eyes, and just listen. Then they'd tell me what they liked about them, what they didn't, what the midrange was doing, why the bass felt wrong. I had no idea what half of it meant. But they told me anyway. My opinion mattered. To the two guys I looked up to most in the world, what I heard mattered.
I think about that a lot now.
My dad also built speakers. Down in the basement, he built these huge cabinets from scratch. To me as a kid they were absolutely enormous. He called them The Coffins. I remember one time in particular, he was down there working and Rocket Man came on. Elton John just filling that whole basement. Dad measuring and cutting, completely in his element, not a care in the world. I just stood there watching him. I don't think he even knew I was there at first. That's one of those memories that's so specific I can almost still smell the sawdust. I have no idea whatever happened to The Coffins. I like to think somebody somewhere still has them, that they ended up in somebody's living room and they're still making music after all these years. That thought makes me happy.
And then there were the late nights. After us kids were supposedly asleep, my parents and Pete would sit in the living room and put on records. That living room was peak 1970s. Yellows, oranges, reds, the whole warm palette that decade was so proud of. Jethro Tull, Jefferson Airplane, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens. That was the soundtrack leaking under the door while I crouched in the hallway pretending I was invisible. I would sneak to the door and peek through the crack and just listen. They never called me out on it. Maybe they never noticed. Maybe they always knew and just let me have it. Either way, those moments are carved into me. The same door, by the way, where I used to sneak out to watch Creature Feature. Wolfman, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and my all-time favorite piece of cinema, and I use that word generously, "Attack of the Mushroom People." Pure B-movie gold. I own it on DVD. Zero regrets.
It was all of that, layered on top of each other, that came loose somewhere in that song on the highway. The stereo store. The listening rooms. The Coffins in the basement. Pete and dad with their eyes closed, hearing something I couldn't quite hear yet. The smells. The sounds leaking under the door late at night. The way the music was just always there, constant, woven through everything.
I get it now. All of it makes complete sense. Because that's just who I am. Music hits me differently than most people. Pretty much all of it. Country, classic rock, jazz, whatever's on. I don't think that happened by accident. That's my dad. That's Pete. That's those Saturday trips to the stereo store when it was just the three of us.
Which brings me to the part I've been sitting with ever since that drive home.
What are my kids going to remember?
It's a strange thing to think about while you're still here. But grief has a way of making you ask the hard questions anyway. First and foremost I hope they remember my love for Jesus and for their mom. Everything else is just details. But after that, will they remember the jokes? There are plenty of those. Will they remember that the music was always on, that dad never just sat in a quiet room if he could help it? I have three kids from my first marriage, Courtney, Zachary, and Ashley. And you know how it goes. They grow up, they go their own ways, and if you're not careful you completely lose touch before you even realize it's happening. Except for Courtney, my oldest. She's the most like me, which is either a really good thing or something she'll need therapy for. Then there's Aiden and Hailey at home. Will any of them be driving somewhere twenty years from now, hear a song, and suddenly be seven years old again sitting in our house? Honestly they might remember something else entirely. Something I'd never even think to put on that list. And somehow that thought makes me smile more than any of the others.
We don't always think about the things that are going to matter most to the people we'll leave behind someday. We're too busy living, which is probably exactly how it should be. But every once in a while, a song comes on the radio and gives you a little reminder.
Be present. Be loud about the things you love. Let them sit in the room with you.
They're listening, even when you think they're asleep.
