Thursday, August 19, 2010

McCartney/Meaghan- Riding the Rides

I went to see Paul McCartney on Saturday.  Monday was the second anniversary of my sister's death. This is what I call an emotional roller coaster. I could compare it to a ride at a Six Flags in purgatory. The ride is one where.. well,.you stand in line with all of the other fans, clutching tickets you've been mentally preparing yourself for your entire life, fun beyond compare.  goose flesh rolling in waves from your arms to the back of your neck... sandwiched between jubilation and fear....

The ride is all you never expected it to be...and more.  There were high peaks, greased wheels squealing over the rails.....(never heard the song Here Today before, about John, chillingly beautiful, written soon after his death...I demand you find it yourselves...it is on the Tug of War album from 1982....never expected A Day in the Life or Something, both poignant, and compelling almost to the point of being overwhelming and sung perfectly.)
There were curves where you expected to feel the wheels release from the rail as you swerved on through..  LET ME ROLL IT !!!...THE TWO OF US!..did not expect so many Wings songs to have impressed me as they did. Did not ever expect to hear Ram On from the second solo album.... Rock Show/Venus and Mars opened the show and set the charges... Now I have everything Wings ever did. My Love was a tough one to get through for very specific reasons, yet it's still a lovely, lovely song.... never again will I write off anything Macca  post Beatles.The Pics I took will be posted soon.....I had the smallest lens of the entire press line..but it mattered not...the pictures I have behind my eyes leave a historic stamp on my time here on earth.

 For the second part of the ride..there was an abundance of coasting....on Sunday, in anticipation of an awful anniversary which will never get any easier....thoughts of all of the snapshots of joy , the joy I volleyed in my head so easily in the company of a Beatle...the simple joy of being alive and experiencing that which makes one as close to happy as they have ever experienced....was taken for granted, a short lived dream , I awake in a sea of sweat, the hours are jumbled, those Saturday snapshots were lost in the undertow of darkness that can so easily pull me under.

Monday....my sister is two years gone...the ride reaches its final turn before returning to the start...to transport so many others closer to their dreams of exhilaration, release and the unknown....the smell of the pull brake the oncoming tunnel, people with their hands up, screaming in the dark....and then day?, light..a coast to a stop...for everyone but me. I pull away in reverse, ride alone to relive that last tunnel over and over, screaming..while she is ahead of me lost in her search for the light. I chase her, begging her to take another ride with me, one or two cars ahead... she will always be one or two cars ahead....


8 comments:

  1. Sean, I am still so sorry for this loss. I hope it becomes more bearable over time. I am also stoked you saw that show. I wish I could have been there. Some of those post-Beatles tunes you mentioned are my favorites of his. And to see the show close enough via a press pass? Wow! Have a good week, man.

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  2. Thinking of you and your sorrow.....

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  3. Anonymous11:15 PM

    Rock on, Sean! Yer sis would want you to! Wish I was there, Macca is one of my favorites too... P.S. Never seen him live, but is the drummer as giant as he appears on tv-film...a mountain of a man! Best to you, bud! -The Outlaw

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  4. Keep enduring Seano - little and big things like this will continue to help you honor the memory of your sister. You and your fam are in my thoughts.

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  5. Anonymous7:39 AM

    you don't know me and I don't know you. it was a weird fluke (or was it) that I found your blog. Today is the 5-year anniversary of losing my partner. Your roller coaster blog described my ride too... going in reverse, begging for one more ride with her, and her always being two cars ahead of me... I think we only have a few people in our lives that we connect with like that and that is what makes it so hard to lose them. I read a book called 'The Barn Dance' by James Tyman that describes some afterlife experiences with his wife. In the book, a friend tells him 'You will never get over it, but it will not always be over you'. Peace to you

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  6. I'm going to borrow this - in just a few months my nephew will have been gone 10 years. This describes the shock of sudden loss, exactly.

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  7. I came across your website and was attracted to the mccartney pics! As i read on the paragraph i was sorry to read about your sister. the pics of paul are great i bet he was too! i kept checking on his website to find the next date of his tour coming to the east, but i guess i must have missed when he was suppose to be in philly-darn!

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