(Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)
I was talking to my friend Emma on the phone today. This in itself is a triumph because I am not really doing much talking these days. She’s been a constant during a time I have no words for, but when I think of her in those memories the words will be “unconditional love”. She has been a soft landing. An unexpected safe place. The mother I need, the friend one dreams of, the mirror I want to cover but can’t. This morning on the phone I admitted to her that I feel as though I used to be so brave. Past tense. She asked “what do you think changed?” I thought about it and said that I think when you break a limb jumping off of the diving board enough times, you stop diving.
It reminded me of an important friendship I had with a collaborator years ago. When we met I was early in the process of grieving my father and he was in the process of losing his. He clung to me and I to him in a way I think we both needed at the time. Early one winter I went to London to spend a month writing new music with him for a new project we were building together. A duo. While I was there, he generously invited me to Ireland for St.Patrick's day weekend to hang out with his family as I had mentioned I hadn’t been to Ireland yet.
The weekend was special in more ways than I can explain. I had never seen people laugh in the face of death the way his family did. We spent the first night drinking and crying from laughing so hard with his parents, sisters and brother until the early hours of the morning. They all knew his father was gravely ill, and they were making the absolute most of every moment and with the most amazing Irish sense of humor. Of course the accents made everything even more amusing.
The second day I was there, his father who was delighted a young American girl was there for the weekend, wanted to show me around. So we all piled our hungover asses into a couple of cars and spent the afternoon driving around the Irish countryside. Now, as I mentioned they all had a fantastic sense of humor so his father insisted on taking me to a particular little town called “Muff”. It had been a long standing joke of his that he would one day open a diving school in Muff and call it….yup, you guessed it, “Muff Diving School”. We also made a pit stop at the local Muff liquor store. Can’t make this shit up.
His father got such a kick out of me getting a kick out of it all. I will forever be grateful for that weekend and all the other times I got to spend with him. It felt like I got a second chance to say goodbye to my own father.
When my friend and I went back to London to work on our music we decided we’d call our duo (which unfortunately never ended up releasing music) “Diving School”. It felt meaningful (and funny) on many levels. It was a connection to his father, but for me, it also felt like a great analogy for life. Because that’s what life feels like. A constant lesson in diving into the unknown. Like the light at the end of the tunnel is at the bottom of the ocean and you will have to spend your whole life diving for it. Over and over. And each time you do, you will see different things. Feel different things. Depending on where you are in life you might need more oxygen, you might not be able to dive that deep some days or you might have the ability to dive deeper and from higher than you ever have on other days.
So, when I mentioned to Emma on the phone that I felt like I had injured myself jumping off of the diving board too many times to keep jumping, she reminded me of you. You the reader, reading these words. And while I started writing to you in desperation, and because I currently find myself unable to use my voice in other ways, Emma reminded me this was still a form of diving. Challenging myself to write to you weekly while simultaneously battling the fear that I feel like no one needs to hear what I have to say, is diving.
I guess what I am saying is, that even if you aren’t feeling brave, the truth is being here is brave enough most days. The truth is even when you feel like you can barely get by, or maybe you don’t leave your house or you’re frozen in grief so you’ve isolated yourself (currently me), or you’re just having a bad day, if you’re reading this you’re still here. You’re still learning, even if it’s in micro steps, how to move forward. We’re all learning how to keep diving every day even if we can’t see it. I think it’s hard to see it when you’re underwater most of the time but maybe if we keep going we will be lucky enough to eventually graduate from diving school at a ripe old age.
Love you ❤️❤️❤️
I love reading your words and find comfort and contemplation in them. Love you