Hank Snow. Marty Robbins. Hank Williams Senior. Waylon, Willie, Merle. Even the people who knew you loved music, who like T. were well acquainted with your vast knowledge, were probably unaware of your first and truest and most enduring music love, the old country stars. I never understood, for the longest time, what the appeal was - me, a writer. Gradually I came to understand it was the way these guys communicated emotions. In other words, the songwriting.
I wish I knew if you ever listened to Julien Baker, or heard the song Hurt Less, which starts I used to never wear my seatbelt, cause I said I didn’t care what happened. That used to be me, too - until one day I took a test to see what kind of risk taker I am. Being so anxious and able to predict the most awful and lethal outcome of any event, I figured I wouldn’t score very high - but I was among the highest. Do you wear your seat belt? the test asked. Sometimes, I answered honestly, not realizing what I was revealing about myself.
Though Julien is not among the hundreds of artists in our mutual musical history, I nevertheless think of you when I hear this song, I think of us in our twenties, driving long licks of asphalt between rows and rows of corn.
You were the first married among your close friends - the gruesome foursome - which surprised everyone, as you were the only one to go away to college. I think everyone thought you’d be *last* at marriage, you being first at everything else including being valedictorian of your class. I always felt guilty about us being married so young, mostly a response to my parents disapproval. We should have said fuck ‘em, and not married til we were 30 - that was your vision for yourself. When I asked if you had any regrets you were always unhesitating. Nope, you said. I had to. But do you mean you had to because of you, or you had to because of me, my folks, I asked, and you kissed me.
R. dated M. and they broke up, then M. married P. and as a result R. never spoke to P. again, not even after he married K., something K. told me she just hates and I can’t say I blame her. Like Yoko, the whole romantic controversy over M. broke up a famous foursome, though you and J. and P. reconvened as a threesome. Then J. and P. drove home that one night, racing. P. won the race and J. lost everything, punching through the back window when the car bounced into a culvert and flipped over and over in the winter-hard furrows of a fallow cornfield. The car that landed on J., killing him, had barely a dent - it didn’t look like a bad enough accident to kill anyone, but J. wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, a non-decision that ended his life, and of course the foursome, which became a permanent threesome but with R. continuing his radio silence, it was just you and P., the twosome. And now, just P.
R. came to the funeral, he is bald so it took me a moment to recognize him. I should have looked at his eyes - they are the same, and as I looked into them, he saw me seeing him and our tears welled up at the exact same time, like a mirror, and we cried in each other’s arms and I know he was mourning more than just your death, I know he was mourning, still is, all those lost years, a stupid loss he’d give anything to take back.
Now it’s just two of you, I said to P., hiccuping with the sorrow of it and he bowed his head and M. whispered, He’s having a real hard time with that. And then we are all holding each other again, by the forearms, just blindly clutching each other and sobbing in a circle and it was quiet all around us because everyone who knew you two knew you as part of the foursome, and I could feel that they were feeling it, the weight of it, the tragedy of it - you and J. gone so early and both so unexpectedly, and it felt like history passing us and walking out of the room, and it felt more holy than any moment I’ve ever spent in church.
I've started wearing safety belts when I’m driving, Julien says in the song and she is just like me, doing it because she has found love, not because she’s learned to love herself. But she’s on the right track, it’s a great first step - even a life saving step - to choose to wear a seat belt. If only J. had.
The hardest part about J’s funeral was his mom. I think he was finally starting to figure it out, get it right, don’t you, she said, her hands in mine, smiling and crying. I agreed, because it was true - J. had a new job, new girlfriend, a new haircut - he was young and handsome and healthy and on top of the world when he died. He thought he had forever, just like we thought we all had forever. I thought how hard it must be to see J.s best friends all there, all of you getting to grow up while J. would remain a Peter Pan figure in all of our lives. I didn’t see her at your funeral, though I’m sure she was there for you, like your mom was there for J., they are now sisters in the awful shared sorrow of outliving a son, their firstborn.
Remember when we road tripped to Chicago to see D. and T. There we were, four country kids headed out for a night in the city, the sparkling downtown skyline in the windshield and George Jones on D.’s tape player, one of your favorite artists ever, same as your dad. A song came on and T. turned it up and we sang the chorus together all night long with great hilarity, Yabba dabba doo, the King is gone and so are you.
I wonder if you listened to any of old George’s music at the end. Surely R. wasn’t a fan, but you never know. Maybe you played him for your kids and they were fascinated, having grown up mostly in another country where country music isn’t a thing. I’m sure they’d have been delighted to hear you sing the way you did with me back in the day.
He stopped loving her today, you’d drawl-sing. They placed a wreath upon his door, And soon they'll carry him away, he stopped loving her today.1
as unlikely as it seems this is the exact song he would sing, this was the exact *lyric* he would sing, usually in pretty fair Randy Travis imitation, who many would argue is doing a pretty fair George Jones imitation; having never heard of George Jones, I found the lyric fascinating, the way it makes you boomerang from assumption to realization about the enduring nature of love and if you let the twanginess stop you from hearing and appreciating that, as I did, well you are missing out