At the far eastern end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, homing in on a New Jersey beach vacation, my iPhone shuffles up the Pat Metheny Group playing "The Epic" from American Garage, as it has done many times before. This time, however, something is different. This time, with the Philadelphia skyline soon to come into view, the song plays and a 37-year cloud cover of grief parts for sunshine.
This is ultimately a happy story, but I have to tell the sad part first, even though I have told it many times before.
I first heard American Garage in 1979, not through any musical adventuring of my own, but because my brother Greg bought the album and played it and played it. As he had done with other bands and songs, he managed to transfer the tunes onto my internal playlist. At just short of 13 minutes, "The Epic" is a jazz fusion instrumental with sections that feel almost like classical movements. Some are, to me, ecstatically beautiful. I have read that Metheny, a guitarist, and collaborator Lyle Mays, a pianist, came to be critical of the song for being "all over the place." I think that's one of the best things about it.
Back to Greg.
In the very early morning of September 11, 1985, he was killed when his friend plowed their car into the back of a semi on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The roof was sheared off. We'll never know why the accident happened, exactly, but I suspect Greg's friend fell asleep at the wheel. His blood alcohol level was 0.08, still under the legal definition of drunk driving for that time. They'd been at a Sting concert at Blossom Music Center in Ohio and were headed home to Pittsburgh. They almost made it.
His friend spent six months in jail, but was, physically at least, uninjured.
Greg was 28 when he died, the youngest of my three brothers. I was 24, and the only girl. He left behind a lot of friends and ski equipment, the memory of his sense of humor and mischief, and a half-opened bud of a life. It would be inaccurate to say his death broke our family, but each of us did our individual breaking on the inside, in isolation. Sudden, tragic loss violates the soul in a manner most harsh.
I was not adept at metabolizing that much grief. What that looked like on any given day varied, but the most pronounced and constant symptom was my inability to loosen my fixation on the story of how Greg's life ended. I imagined and reimagined the crash, the scene, the sirens and the fatal injuries. In the absence of a particular fact, my brain invented details — more and more of them as time passed. The funeral director had asked my parents for a photograph to confirm Greg's identity, and encouraged them to leave the casket closed. They did. In the weeks and months that followed, I became critical of that decision, because not having seen my brother made his death seem unreal. I thought we could have handled seeing some cuts and bruises if it meant having more of a sense of closure.
Only much later did it dawn on me how devastating his injuries must have been. What they probably were.
"May his memory be a blessing."
I first read these words on Facebook from Jewish friends offering them in condolence to someone who had lost a family member. What a profound message: In a single sentence, it is an act of loving kindness and a salve.
It is also, to my mind, a self-help book. What we make of grief is, in part, up to us, even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment. When our loved ones depart, they leave us with all kinds of memories and feelings, but we get to pick which ones to replay. Some people understand that right away. At the first easing of acute grief, they begin accepting the blessings of good memories. They nourish the best and let the worst blow away like storm clouds.
Others of us get so snagged on the end of the story — the trauma and details and the pain of the death itself — that we effectively negate all the good things our person achieved during his one and epic life, however long it lasted.
The trauma of sudden loss is immense, and I don't want to suggest that we could just "get over it" even if we wanted to. I'm only suggesting that it's OK if what we want is to bring the blessings forward.
So there I am, driving along the Pennsylvania Turnpike — the same highway that swallowed Greg's young life. We are headed toward our little New Jersey beach town, which was the last place I saw my brother 37 years ago. We had walked the beach one night and he had given me solid brotherly advice about men. Then he left the next day and he was gone. In the years before that, though, he had taught me to windsurf, and before that, to ski. Once he had hauled his drums up from the basement and put them next to the piano, and we scratched out a halting version of "Layla" together. I'm sure it was an assault on the ears. I'd love to hear it.
The Pat Metheny Group is playing "The Epic," and I'm experiencing that thing that happens when the beauty of the music itself sits alongside the pleasure of anticipating the notes. I start to wonder how many times I've listened to this piece over the decades, when suddenly I understand that this is what people mean when they speak about carrying our loved ones in our hearts.
In this moment my brother is alive, crossing time — again — to give me this song.
The tune plays on, exuberant and lush, loud and soft, fast and slow — all over the place. Our wheels keep turning, and I am overcome with joy. For the very first time, my memory of Greg is all blessing, free and clear.