Yeah, I’ve been AWOL for weeks. Once again, November has not been a kind month.
You may recall that John Higgins died suddenly last year, right before Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law passed away a couple weeks ago, after an eight-month fight with pancreatic cancer. I was up in New York for her final week.
Death’s a funny thing in America. We tend to tuck it away, out of sight. Oh sure, our popular culture is full of violence and death, but not the kind of quiet death that most of us have to face in our lives: a family member, a friend, a classmate.
HBO’s Six Feet Under was a rare glimpse behind the wall of the mechanics of the afterdeath experience. Between that and Autopsy, you can get all the death you want. For the living, it’s a bloody tough time to go through.
My own mother died of cancer when I was 22. Kinda messed me up. I got through that time by listening obsessively to two songs: Madonna’s “Angel” and Prince’s “17 Days.”
Not as cool as the songs that got me through John’s death. You can seem anguished and cool listening to Hole. Nothing hip about Madonna, not since 1982.
I’m not even really a fan of hers. But “Angel” was on the radio in the summer of ‘85 and it somehow spoke to me though my pain. For some reason, I had the 12″ version with the extended mix by Niles Rodgers and James Farber, maybe because “Into the Groove” was the b-side. The Prince song was the flip side of the “When Doves Cry” single, which had come out the previous summer.
I haven’t listened to either of these songs in a long time. I stuck them on the iPod today and was walking along, not particularly focusing all that much. About halfway through “Angel,” I was reduced to tears.
So what’s the lesson? Maybe it’s that the craziest, most ridiculous, things will get you through the worst times in your life.
Madonna – Angel (Extended Dance Mix) — BUY
Prince – 17 Days — BUY
Tags: death songs, Madonna, Prince
3 Responses
-
maulleigh Says:
I’m surprised you didn’t go with Prince’s “Sometimes it snows in April.” Damn, that song’s made me cry a few times.
-
Dan Dorman Says:
My most sincere condolences to you and your wife. I lost my Grandmother last year and I know how hard the holidays can be after something like that. My Mommom (as she was known) practically raised me. Even in my twenties it seemed she was always there to take care of me. I guess that’s the one thing I always took for granted — that she was always there. I didn’t cry for weeks and weeks after she passed on. Then one night, I was listening to a CD and out of nowhere it finally hit me. For me, that song would be She Wants To Play Hearts by Ryan Adams. Now every time I hear that song I revisit that night from just over a year ago. It still hasn’t gotten any easier. The only good thing is, the next song on that CD is Tennessee Sucks.
-
CTel Says:
My sympathy to you and your wife. I lost my son two months ago, so I have some idea of what you’re going through. You said “the craziest, most ridiculous, things will get you through the worst times in your life”. How true. I’ve run the full gamut from maudlin R.E.M. (”Love is all around”) to some Mylo remixes.