A few weeks ago, I took the boys to Church. And by Church, I mean Eric Church. This was Tony’s favorite singer and every song he released; Tony seemed to identify with more than the last. I don’t think there was a song he didn’t like.
Right after Tony passed, tickets for one of his concerts went on sale. The boys resoundingly said they wanted to go. In February of 2022, less than a year after their dad died, I took them to their first Eric Church concert. We knew all the songs because we’d heard Tony sing along to them one hundred times.
Fast forward a few years, a new album, and a new concert tour announcement. I don’t believe in surprising the boys much when it comes to honoring their dad’s memory. So, I asked them if they’d want to go to another Eric Church concert. I honestly wasn’t sure how they’d feel about going this time. But once again, without hesitation, all three of them said yes.
Almost exactly four years later, I found myself and our kids at another Eric Church concert. Half the setlist was new music that Tony will never hear. As I listen to his new music, I always wonder what songs Tony would have gravitated to the most. While I have a few guesses, I’ll never get to ask him.
Another intrusive thought I kept having during the show was if Eric Church was going to play the songs I played during the funeral. Would my kids associate those songs with dad or the funeral? Would I cry? Who might need a hug and was I close enough to reach them? This cycle of thought made me a little anxious every time a new song started. But at the end of the show, he didn’t play either of them. So, all that worry was for naught.
Looking back at the evening, I find myself pondering over all the ways we have grown a lot these last four years. And not just the kids in height and maturity. We’ve learned how to navigate forward carrying our grief. When to walk away from people who cannot see the hurt their words and actions, have inflicted upon us. We’ve found a depth of understanding in other people we didn’t know existed. How to say that our loved one died by suicide and not whisper it in shame. Along the way, we have stumbled but even the ‘normies’ without dead people stumble. So in spite of it all, we are Holding Our Own, and I’ll keep both arms around our boys for Tony.
