Happy Birthday, Jarnney.

#20 I Grieve – Peter Gabriel 1998/2002 

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I wrote this post on June 30, 2020, which would have been John “Yardhippie” Rogers’ 44th birthday, but like his last eight birthdays, he has not been here to celebrate with us, having been taken from us on December 15, 2011. There are many songs that remind me of him, of that day, of his ash dive, his life, but I chose this one to share with that day.

It was only one hour ago

It was all so different then

Nothing yet has really sunk in

Looks like it always did

This flesh and bone

Is just the way that we are tied in

But there's no one home

I grieve, for you

You leave, me

So hard to move on

Still loving what's gone

They say life carries on

Carries on and on and on and on

One moment, I was planning to spend Christmas with him, and the next minute, the Food Guy was telling me, “There’s been an accident.” Life floats on such fragile wings.

Peter Garbriel released “I Grieve” on his 2002 album Up, but it had also been included on the City of Angels soundtrack (from the movie with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage – a nice chick flick) and performed once or twice before its appearance on Up.

The news that truly shocks

Is the empty, empty page

While the final rattle rocks

It's empty, empty cage

And I can't handle this

I grieve, for you

You leave, me

Let it out and move on

Missing what's gone

They say life carries on

They say life carries on and on and on

“You leave – me” goes the line. The pause before “me” is painful. His absence in the world affects many people, but in the end, it feels personal.

Life carries on in the people I meet

In everyone that's out on the street

In all the dogs and cats

In the flies and rats

In the rot and the rust

In the ashes and the dust

Life carries on and on and on and on

Life carries on and on and on

Life carries on and on and on and on

Life carries on and on and on

Just the car that we ride in

The home we reside in

The face that we hide in

The way we are tied in

As life carries on and on and on and on

Life carries on and on and on

It seems so cruel how life goes on when all you want is everything to stop, as in W. H. Auden’s poem, “Funeral Blues.” “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone/Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone…Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.”

I once had a student in a composition class who wasn’t doing very well. It was soon after John’s death, so I warned my classes I might break down for apparently no reason. I sometimes did. He sought me out after class one day, early in the semester, and revealed that his grandmother who had raised him had just been diagnosed with cancer. He had some other problems he was dealing with. And he asked me, “How do you do this every day? How do you go on?” I told him that I tell myself people depended on me, like him. That I had responsibilities, things that only I could do. You just do it – one foot in front of the other. It seemed to help. He performed better in my class anyway.

Did I dream this belief

Or did I believe this dream?

Now I will find relief

I grieve

There is some relief in dealing with day-to-day necessities. It doesn’t mean that you don’t think like Auden, “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood./For nothing now can ever come to any good.” But life carries on.

And I grieve. Happy birthday, Jarnney.

Spotify: "I Grieve" -- Peter Gabriel