Music and Grief Pt. 2

This poem by the American poet Hanif Abdurraqib demonstrates the role of music in our grief and healing better than anything else I know. On one hand it shows how music can mark our grief. In this poem, the song playing when a father leaves his family becomes loaded as a symbol of abandonment. For you it may not be a song—a smell, a date on the calendar, or even a t-shirt can equally trigger a painful memory.

On the other hand, this poem shows how the sounds of a piano can soothe and heal the sorrow of loss. Again, it may not be music for you—it may be food, mountains, friendship, or poetry. Beauty and art have a way of accessing our inner worlds and we should look for ways to include them in our grief and healing. I hope this poem speaks to you as it does to me.

When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back

by Hanif Abdurraqib

and this is why none of us sing along to “Don’t Stop Believin’”
when we are being driven by Jeff’s mom, four boys packed in the
backseat tight like the tobacco in them cigarettes Jeff’s mom got
riding

shotgun with us around I-270 in a powder blue Ford Taurus where
four years later Jeff will lose his virginity to a girl behind the East
High School football field then later that night his keys and pants
in the school pool so that he has to run

home crying to his mother with an oversized shirt and no pants,
like a cartoon bear, and the next day when I hear this story, I will
think about what it means for someone to become naked two
times in one night to rush into the warmth of two

women, once becoming a man and once becoming a boy all over
again but right now it is just us in this car with Jeff’s mother, that
cigarette smoke dancing from her lips until it catches the breeze

from the cracked front window and glides back towards us a
vagabond, searching for a throat to move into and cripple while
Neal Schon’s guitar rides out the speakers and I don’t know how
many open windows a man has to climb out of in the middle of the
night in order to have hands that can make anything scream like
that.

nothing knows the sound of abandonment like a highway does, not
even God.

in the 1980’s, everyone wrote songs about someone leaving except
for this one cuz it’s about how the morning explodes over two
people in one bed who didn’t know each other the night before
when alone

was the only other option and their homes had too many mirrors
for all that shit and so it is possible that this is the only song written
in the 1980’s about how fear turns into promise
I think I know this because there is so much piano spilling

all over our laps that we can’t help but to smile since we still black
and know nothing can ransack sorrow like a piano.

Jeff’s mother’s hand trembles and still wears a wedding ring so she
pulls over to the side of the highway and turns the volume up so
loud after the second guitar solo when the keys kick in again that
we can barely hear the cocktail

of laughter and crying consuming the front seat until the song
fades away and the radio is low again and the ring once on Jeff’s
mother’s hand is on the side of the highway beneath us, a sacrifice

and so maybe this is why grandma said a piano can coax even the
most vicious of ghosts out of a body.

and so maybe this is why my father would stare at the empty spaces
my mother once occupied, sit me down at a baby grand and
whisper play me something, child.

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Have you ever told your stories of abandonment, heartache, or harm to a trusted guide that can bear witness to your pain? Reach out to Good Shepherd Soul Care or someone else to get the care you deserve.