Crashing a Funeral

Buckle Up for a Ballad

When I say ballad, I mean ballad. This one’s a good long two part story about the power of music, from a musician’s perspective. If ballads aren’t your cup of tea, all good. If not, here we go!

Part I

By the time we experience it

Every moment is already a memory.

A phone comes alive with news of death.

“Ken B passed yesterday,” a text from my music partner rattles my pocket. “I really treasure the times we played music for him.”

Mike and I have played together as a duo for several years now, performing over a hundred shows - everywhere from restaurants and bars, private events and outdoor concert series, breweries and wineries, community fundraisers and weddings.

So many intimate moments, so many unexpected windows into the lives of so many people.

It is a sacred privilege.

My all time favorite music moment didn’t happen at any of those places. In fact it almost didn’t happen at all.

It was a song in a church for a dying man.

---

My playing partner Mike hails from a country and bluegrass musical background. In fact, dudeman was a singer and guitarist in a full bluegrass band for years. As for me, I hail from no particular playing background, and never sang a note in public until midlife woke my voice up at 40.

Our personal preferences haven’t been an issue for us, because what we share is a love of all music - a reverence for its power. We’ll play just about anything at our shows. From Stevie Wonder to the Dave Matthews Band. Linda Ronstadt to Outkast. Fleetwood Mac to Prince. From Kenny Chesney to the Beatles to The Weeknd to Tom Petty to Taylor Swift to Tears for Fears to… you get the idea.

Music is contagious. Anything that moves an audience moves us. Likewise, anything that moves us will move an audience. Well, maybe not everyone - but there is always someone.

Just one chord, one note, has the power to resurrect an ancient memory like it’s happening for the very first time, all over again.

It’s the power of resonance. The power of alchemy.

---

Nine Months Ago

When a live version of a song called “Where I Find God” showed up on the ‘ole Youtube feed, I almost didn’t click on it. Two country looking dudes peered out at me, one looking exceedingly bluegrass-y, complete with Stetson hat and Amish beard, and the other in a disheveled white T-shirt and baseball cap with a small mullet waterfall cascading out the back.

Then I heard them sing together.

And what came through those guys moved me.

40 freaking million views - holy hand grenades. Very much worth playing as a reading soundtrack while scrolling.

I thought of Mike immediately. “Holy crapola this song is right up his alley - and damned if I don’t LOVE it so much.”

Before it was over I already knew we were going to learn it and play it together. He’d have no problem embodying the rural storytelling vocals of Larry Fleet. And I couldn’t wait to transform myself into a mullet-cascading Morgan Wallen.

*** ***

We practiced for about a month, and finally decided it was decent enough to give it a go at the nearby church where Mike is very active. A month wasn’t near enough time for me to grow the requisite mullet, but on the plus side, there couldn’t be a better debut venue for this particular song cover than a small town church in rural Virginia.

On the morning of our performance we got there early for a quick sound check and rehearsal. The previous 8:45am service had just ended and folks were trickling into the aisle and out to the parking lot.

We waded our way inside, guitars in hand, through an ebbing tide of Sunday sojourners.

A woman pushing a man in a wheelchair stopped us on our way in. Friends of Mike’s.

“Wait - you guys are playing this morning?”

“Oh! Hey Ken - Hey Deb. Sorry you just missed us,” Mike’s face filled with regret. “We’re playing at the eleven o’clock.”

I knew only two things about Ken - he shared our universal love of all music, and he had terminal brain cancer.

“So sad we’ll miss you,” the woman said as she wheeled Ken past, and we continued on towards the front altar to begin soundcheck.

I knew only one thing about Deb - she loved her husband with everything she had. There was something in the way she moved his wheelchair.

*** ***

At the end of the aisle Mike stopped in his tracks, furrowing his brow like a Cro Magnon contemplating the potential uses of fire for the first time. I’d seen that look on him only a handful of times - it moves hell and high water, and has caused both.

“Grab your guitar and come with me.”

He took off back the way we came, and before I knew what was happening he was teeing up an impromptu mariachi band style performance of Where I Find God for Ken and Deb.

They looked as surprised as I was to find themselves in this situation. The sudden forced intimacy was jarring. There was no microphone or stage or speakers separating us - nothing for anyone to hide behind.

And I was standing there like a fourth wheel, if that. I must’ve cleared my throat around eight or nine times as second after awkward second stretched out. The couple looked at us expectantly, likely wondering if we’d ever break the uncomfortable silence.

We finally kicked off the opening guitar riff and everyone else in the church went quiet. Standing in the middle of the aisle with church pews parting around the four of us like the Red Sea, I closed my eyes and poured my absolute soul into it.

Time crystallized, my eyes reopening as we sang the last note and

They meet the eyes of this woman i don’t know 
 Gossamer strands of glistening watery light reflecting the warm morning sun
  streaming in through twelve crystal windows

  and i FEEL what this means for her 
     and i FEEL what this means for him 
        his joy for music
           her joy for his respite from pain

and i am beyond honored melting into this most sacred of moments that holds the truth of  ALL moments
          a husband and wife living on borrowed time

And as the last of our music lapsed back into its own soundless infinity, I realized my song wasn’t just for a dying man.

It was for the woman who would survive him.

---

Part II - Nine Months Later

Another text comes through from my playing partner. “Hey man,” the buzzing in my pocket is back after a few days. “Ken’s funeral is next Saturday. Could you play a song with me? Deb asked me to play Time in a Bottle.”

I haven’t seen Ken and Deb since that moment in church, but the memory pours in like it was yesterday. My fragmented remembrance doesn’t do it justice - the same way their marriage was a finite container of something so much larger, something immeasurable.

And her song choice. Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce.

A ballad of human mortality, written by a man who would not live to see its success. Written moments after his wife told him she was expecting their first child.

For me the song stands in both acknowledgment and defiance of the futility in trying to hold on to a moment that is already gone by the time it arrives. Yet with everything stacked against us - with death as the one known outcome - we all try anyways. We all show up.

But I’m not thinking about that. I’m not thinking about anything. Because for me the song itself is a personal time portal, and the text moves me deep into the aisle of my own memory…

An aqua blue shimmering dress swirls
   A mother's smile unveiled
My mom and I are dancing together 
   for the first and only time in my life 
      on my wedding day. 
Dancing to a song she chose
“Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce. 

*** ***

I’m deeply resistant to the idea of playing a song at a funeral when I don’t know the deceased and I wasn’t invited by their family.

But a dance with my mother from seventeen years ago has infused this particular song in my bones.

Plus it’s a pretty complex arrangement to play and sing at the same time, especially on short notice. Mike’s got to be panicked about learning it in time.

So I agree to help and get to work learning the guitar part. I don’t even have to sing; Mike will do all the heavy lifting. All I have to do is show up and support him.

Easy enough.

*** ***

The morning of the funeral arrives.

We get there early for our soundcheck and practice run. The church is empty except for the pianist warming up. There is no one to play for in the aisle.

I rest my guitar in its stand next to the grand piano while we wait for our turn, and as the pianist keys into a rehearsal of You Raise Me Up, I do a doubletake. My guitar has just come alive.

It’s playing all on its own.

My jaw drops for a split second, until I realize that the sound coming from the piano is vibrating the resonant strings. I watch in awe as different piano chords vibrate different string patterns, as if they are being strummed by an unseen hand.

As we start our practice run I am still marveling at the mysterious power of sound being made so starkly visible.

And then catastrophe hits.

In a rush of panic, I realize that I don’t have the last part of the song right. At all.

And there are exactly ten minutes left before the service starts to unlearn a week’s worth of repetition, and then perform a much more difficult version less than an hour later. Live. At a funeral.

I rush into the choir dressing room area, playing it over and over, desperate to ingrain the change before the service starts. I get it right about one in every three tries. And when it’s wrong, it’s REALLY wrong. Like excruciatingly, ear-shatteringly, nails-on-the-chalkboard awful.

I NEED to get this right. It’s the only reason I’m here.

*** ***

The ten minute window expires, forcing me to take my seat in a church pew. The service is about to begin. Fear-laced thoughts flood my world.

Beginning as a trickle and becoming a torrent, at least a hundred people come in. Then more. Everyone looks like they’ve been hit by a truck. My heart beats faster and I swallow the lump in my throat.

Then I look at the bulletin.

Time In A Bottle is earmarked as the very last item in the service.

The last riff, in fact the last note - the exact one I’m struggling with - will be the culmination of the entire memorial service.

Mike’s name is in the program next to the song. Mine isn’t. The bulletin takes on the vibration of my trembling hands, and a heart threatens to crack through a ribcage.

I’m going to ruin the memory of Ken for everyone who came here to honor him. A rushing sound fills my ears, crushing thoughts now overpowering

“I don’t belong here”

“I didn’t know even know the deceased, and I don’t know his wife”

“The widow didn’t even invite me here - I’m only here because Mike needs help with the guitar part

I’m an imposter”

I take a deep shaky breath, desperate to steady myself.

*** ***

From past experience, when the full on fight or flight response shows up at places where there is no direct physical threat, I know my life is pretty adamant about communicating something.

So after several more steadying breaths I ask of it, “What are you showing me here?”

I look around. Strained smiles, stiff greetings. Sparse bits of cordial humor here and there, but beyond that there is no joy to be found. I am used to bringing a sense of upliftment, of levity to most of the places I play.

This isn’t that.

This is the edge of the abyss. This is a plutonic gathering of souls, bringing everyone face to face with the rising undercurrent of our own mortality. Each breath bringing each one of us closer to our last.

Death lives here.

Just beneath a placid cordial surface lurks lifetimes of pain. Unspeakable suffering. Shattering loss. How do I find any measure of joy here?

And then it hits me.

The deepest joy lies on the blurred edge of grief. To grieve is to honor life, for to live at all is to be willing to lose everything. Everyone is here to grieve. Allow them THAT gift.

As if in response to this personal epiphany, the chaplain starts his eulogy. He shares an intimate window into the last six months with the couple in hospice care. Nothing is sugarcoated. He honors their love in the face of a slow, painful goodbye.

He brings their grief to life.

*** ***

Our time comes, and I follow Mike up to the altar area.

Bending down to plug into the sound system, <POP> my guitar goes off like a gunshot ricocheting through the rafters. Crap - the connection is already live.

“Hello!” I wince aloud to the congregation through a rueful grin, grateful for a polite ripple of understanding chuckles. Straightening my full frame and spidering fingers into starting position on the neck of the guitar, my eyes meet Deb’s in the front row.

And they are glistening the exact same way they did nine months ago.

And in those eyes there is unconditional love - they don’t care if I fail. All they care about in this moment is that I am here.

And they remind me who I am playing for.

My eyes well up. I see her through blurred edges now.

Mike speaks. He points to the aisle at the front of the church. The unexpected place where we found God in the opportunity to play for Ken nine months ago.

He nods at me and we begin. Our song is one long moment of bittersweet grief. His voice and my guitar do our damnedest, spiraling together, trying to trap lightning in a bottle. Trying to channel the lifeblood of a forty year marriage into a three minute song.

An unseen hand plays the very last chord, and as it reverberates out through the rafters and pews and people

i am dancing with my mom and playing music with my brother and honoring the wish of a widow and feeling her husband’s undying gratitude and i know that the shared grief of our inevitable separation is the very essence that unites us all because i can FEEL it and as the final note rings out all of the moments converge into One and

the bottle shatters

its crystal shards reflecting out of a hundred glistening eyes.