Meaning

Comrades!

Man, oh man, it's been a rough couple of weeks. I went to three funerals in just as many days. One was for the lady who was helping me become an adjunct professor at a community college, one was a friend's mom, and the last was for my Aunt Janene, who finally lost her battle to cancer.

Sitting there in a suit and tie, watching the family circus, and wanting to utter so many profanities that it would be must unfitting of the occasion, but perfect for the underlying and all-too-real situation, I got to thinking, grieving, and changing a bit.

The question has been asked so many times it's been beaten into a pulp of cliches, but seriously, man, what is it all about?

I don't have an answer.

You know, I think at my funeral, I want somebody to stand up, and say "Josh is dead. It's really sad. There's no happy ending. Perhaps we'll never see him again. Perhaps he's burning in hell. Perhaps he's jamming with Jimi Hendrix. All I know for sure is that he's in the ground, and now I'm gonna go cry." I'd like someone to grab a guitar and sing "One Kind Favor" with the line "Now you'll know the poor boy's in the ground." (To be honest of what I REALLY want, perhaps the guitar could be from my personal collection, and encrusted with diamonds and rubies for that "authentic delta blues sound.")

In times of distress, we grasp desperately for answers. Maybe there aren't any.

I seem to be growing into an adulthood where things are a bit more somber, grayer, sadder, and more poignant than I had expected - and that's OK.

I read the achievements on the cheap paper that litter the pews after the masses shuffle off, equally as uncomfortable with death as with the ill-fitting suits they wear, and think how empty the degrees and towns and jobs sound.

I pick up my guitar, glad to be able to feel the strings under my fingertips, and play to the early evening street corner, where only a few people pass by, none of them really listening.

And I'm so glad that I'm alive and well to add to the night music.

Maybe what my mom said is right - it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

- Josh