The Meaning of....

Preparing myself mentally for this Saturday, when my family will spread my dad's ashes in a garden at his church, I came back to Neil Young's "Daddy Went Walkin'," a song that took on great meaning to me in the days and weeks after my father's death. I was surprised, as I searched online for Young's interpretation of the lyrics, by other people's impressions of the song.

In a PopMatters review of Young's Silver & Gold album, Bill Holmes's interpretation is that the song "deals with broken families from the perspective of a hopeful child." Concert reviewer Chris Nelson, writing on MTV.com, says of the song: “While the lyrics seemed simple, Young’s purposeful delivery rendered the lines cinematic. One could picture the song’s narrator, only as tall as the weeds, walking beside a towering father."

"'Daddy Went Walkin' is just a playful number about Dad going out and cutting wood, accompanied by the barnyard cat. Is that really worth a song?" asked Jeffrey Overstreet in reviewing Silver & Gold on Tollbooth.org, a Christian-themed entertainment site. "Like a William Carlos Williams poem about a red wheelbarrow, Neil Young is calling attention to the lasting value of simple memories, simple lives, simple tasks."

Other reviewers thought the song simple and rather stupid, and not worth their time.

Looking for meaning in a song, poem, book or movie is subjective, of course. Where others hear a child's voice or the value of honest work and living simply, I divine a middle-aged guy imagining his father in the afterlife, ambling along happily with his former pets, doing some chores and thinking about the day he'll be reunited with the love of his life.

Mama's waiting / at the top of the hill,

They'll be laughing / oh the stories they'll tell...

When he holds her / in his arms again

They'll be sweethearts / with time on their hands

I plan to recite, possibly even sing, these lyrics during the short service on Saturday. Listen to the song, and let me know what you think it means.

Baseball is back....

It's been a long winter, and although spring has sprung, it hasn't brought very warm temperatures to Boston this week. But that's OK, because it's Opening Day!

One of my favorite memories of going to Fenway Park is the game that Beth and I attended with Owen and my dad in 2009 (see picture above). A friend of mine from college handed over tickets (free of charge!) to the State Street Pavilion. We had great seats along the third base line, didn't have to deal with huge crowds for food and beer and honestly I don't remember if the Sox won (I think they did) but it was just so cool to be there with three generations of Sox lovers.

My dad passed away a year ago today, the day after my 49th birthday. Those few days in the hospital with him and my family were the toughest of my life. I'm thinking of him today and remembering all the times we played baseball, listened and watched the Sox, both on TV and in person, and just enjoyed the simplicity of soaking in our favorite sport.

Message In a Concertina

(My dad, Richard Brigham -- 1929-2014)

I'm neither religious nor spiritual, but when my father passed away a month ago today, I came to understand why people believe in heaven. Honestly, I don't know what I believe, but I experienced a moment a few days after my dad's death that stopped me short and made me give hard thought to the afterlife.

My father was unconscious for the last three days of his life. During that time, my mother, sister, brother and I talked to him (giving him updates on the Red Sox and UConn basketball, telling we loved him, recounting old stories) and also sang to him. We sang an old song that we'd grown up on, called "Skinamarinky Dinky Dink," many times.

But it was my mother's beautiful rendition of "True Love," a song written by Cole Porter in 1956 and made popular by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in "High Society," that I found the most touching. The song was popular during the time that my parents were dating, and it was the closest thing they had to a wedding song.

My mother sang it several times to my father while he was in the hospital. She didn't remember all the words, but did recall the most important ones:

While I give to you and you give to me

True love, true love

So on and on it will always be

True love, true love

In the days following my dad's death, my mother, sister, brother and I began planning a memorial service. Four days after his passing, my sister emailed a YouTube clip of the song "True Love," featuring Crosby and Kelly from "High Society." We knew we had to include the song in the service in some fashion.

Here's the clip:

You'll notice that Crosby is playing a small accordion, called a concertina. About an hour after I watched the video that Thursday, I went for a walk. I needed to clear my head a bit after what had been several long, stressful, painful and sad days.

I walked, as usual, along the path that runs next to the Charles River through Newton, Watertown, Waltham and other area towns. I came to a road crossing, and decided that, rather than proceed on the path as I always do, that I could walk along the road, crossing the river on a bridge.

Just a few seconds after diverting onto this new route, I passed a young guy wearing a backpack and playing...a concertina.

Never in my life had I seen anybody playing a concertina while walking down the street. And I'd certainly never seen this guy before on my walks. Why did I change course from my usual walk? I can't say. After I passed the guy, I turned and looked to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Sure enough, he was continuing on his way, unaware that he'd played a part in not only making my day, but also in sending me off into cosmic wonderings.

I took this experience the only way I could: as a sign from my dad that he was OK, wherever he was (and, as I told my kids, wherever he was, he was surely enjoying plenty of desserts). My brother, sister and mother have all experienced their own signs from my father. Mine involved music, which is such a huge and important part of my life.

I think about my dad all the time, and sometimes talk to him. I don't know if I'll have another experience like I did with the concertina, but I know that, as my nearly 12-year-old son, Owen told me, "You can always talk to Big Gramps."

Remembrance

Yesterday, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the death of a childhood friend, I learned about the passing of a woman I knew back in the mid-'80s. Julie was 48; my childhood friend, Bene, was 39 when he died in 2005.

Bene and Julie knew each other, too, a little bit. I grew up with Bene (pronounced "Benny"). We played on the same Little League team, the Yankees; toiled together in the junior high school band, he on trumpet, me on clarinet; and went through all the highs, lows and craziness of high school with the rest of our crew -- Andy, John and three guys named Steve.

All of us met Julie, her sister Laurie, Laurie's boyfriend, Jimmy, and one or two other guys at the Hartford Drive-In in May 1984. I forget what movies we saw, but they were definitely schlocky horror flicks along the lines of "Last House On the Left" and "Slumber Party Massacre."

My friends and I were hanging outside the car drinking beer, munching on movie snacks and goofing off when the girls and their friends approached us. They had applied fake blood on their mouths, and were squirting it around at each other and at us. We'd never met them before, but we all became instantly friendly.

We all hung out that night, and they invited us to a party they were having the following weekend. I told them I was going to be out of town, but I urged my friends to go.

The next time I saw Julie and Laurie was at an Echo & the Bunnymen concert that summer. Once again we had fun just hanging out, being goofy and digging the music.

Over the next four years I saw the two of them off and on, both at concerts and parties in Connecticut, and when they came up to visit me at college in Keene, NH.

The two sisters were always a blast to hang out with -- fun-loving, outrageous, spontaneously wacky, and into cool music. After I graduated from college in 1987, I didn't see them as much. After I moved to Boston with my girlfriend (now wife), Beth, I lost touch completely with Julie and Laurie.

Until Facebook.

Laurie found me first, and I quickly added her and Julie as friends. It was great to reconnect, catch up with each other and talk once in a while about the "old days."

I found out a few years ago that Julie was sick with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease. Still, despite her condition, I could tell from the photos and status updates that she and Laurie posted on Facebook, that Julie still had her fun-loving spirit.

Although she lived about 30 minutes away from me, outside Boston, we didn't reconnect face-to-face. I regret that.

I never knew Julie well, but I'll always remember her as a really nice person who was quick to smile.

As for my friend Bene, I'll always remember him for his honesty, his humor, his athleticism, his laugh and his willingness to drive all of us around in his Galaxie 500 just looking for something fun to do, like a party, a mini golf game, or a drive-in movie.