Personal Journal

My Concert

I don’t recall whether I mentioned I had a concert to go to on Valentine’s night. Collective Soul. The attendees were Cindy, Deb, Jeff (the three siblings), Brenda, myself, and Tatijana (TJ).

Well, I had bought the tickets before I knew that TJ was coming, so we would have been short 1, and the concert was sold out. But Deb’s boyfriend, who is 47, had a freaking heart attack over the weekend and was in the hospital, so she wasn’t attending.

We started the evening with Thai food, which was good, for the most part. I learned some new tricks for tofu for the next time I’m making it. Asian food and tofu are perfect together – Tofu, in my opinion, has limited ability as a substitute “meat” because the texture can really belie the difference. But tofu in anything stir-fry seems to come out wonderfully.

The concert was pretty cool. Really, the 5 of us talked a lot in the music, and we had a lot of laughs. I really enjoyed that. I hadn’t seen TJ in 4 years because she had lived in Germany for a few, and she only returned when Jean was ill, and I didn’t see much of anyone during that time.

Brenda has some woman’s issue with her ovaries that makes her body chemistry messed up. She’s going to have to take some medicine for the rest of her life, and though I don’t know her very well, I know through Cindy that she’s a very closed person, emotionally, but that this new unwelcome diagnosis really has her, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, feeling sorry for herself.

Well, Brenda had 3 gin & tonics. And her meds disagree with alcohol. At one point she quickly went down to one knee and I immediately went down with her to see if she was okay. From my own point of view, it was thrilling, though that may sound odd to say. There I was, helping someone in need again. Brenda said she was dizzy and wanted to go to the bathroom. So Cindy and I took her and started walking her there, and she completely passed the fuck out in the narrowest part of the concert hall. I was able to keep her from smacking her head, and I went down with her to talk to her and keep her calm.

A GREAT bouncer by name of Ali (I asked him later) helped me out down there with her. She apparently just got the blood out of her head. We helped her to the lady’s room and Cindy went in with her, and everything turned out okay.

Brenda, Cindy, and TJ were getting ready to go. Me and Jeff were going to stay. I spent a few minutes out with Brenda while Cindy and TJ got stuff together to leave.

Brenda wanted to know what I knew about her condition. I told her not much, but I knew she had to take meds for her chemistry. Brenda said to me that she’ll have to be on that medication for the rest of her life, and she said it forlornly.

On the quiet, cold street, I decided to say what I was thinking. I asked her if I could be blunt, and she said sure, and I said it could be worse. It could be terminal brain cancer… Brenda’s condition, at its worst, means she will produce a little more testosterone than she’d like, and maybe won’t be able to have kids (but she doesn’t want them). She nodded. We continued to make small talk.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I probably should not have, but I don’t particularly feel guilty about it. I wasn’t in her face about it – I was trying to give her something to think about – to put these things in perspective perhaps, in a way that made her more comfortable with that.

One thing I learned in my time with Jean’s illness is that these feelings of loss and grief are not competitive. Someone may break a nail and feel worse about it than I do at Jean’s passing. It’s generally not a good idea to try to one-up someone who’s upset about loss.

Brenda has lost her conception of her health, and she is entitled to grieve about that. But I don’t think it’s … proper… for her to feel sorry for herself this long after her diagnosis. Brenda has a lot of personal issues to work through since her divorce. Her husband basically flaked out on her about 18 months into their marriage, and that left Brenda very shaken.

I hope she is not upset with me for what I said. I feel like I ought to apologize, but I’m not going to, because really, I think what I went through and what Jean went through…. Well, frankly, I feel that once in a while, I’m entitled to be the person who reminds people that life isn’t such a miserable pile of shit as they might like to believe.

I don’t know.

Anyhow, this subject will have to be brought up again. I’ll probably be asking Kim some questions about my plans to ask Brenda to attend the blues concert with me on the 25th.

I left the concert early because the cigarette smoke drove me ill. So ill, in fact, that I was nauseous on the drive home, and I finally did throwup after getting out of my clothes (I wasn’t drunk; I had 2 beers over 2 hours, and they were small). I haven’t thrown up in ages. It reminded me of Jean’s nausea and what she went through, I guess. But I only threw up twice, then I felt fine.

That whole incident though, made me remember how rough Jean had it at times. And that makes me feel somber…



It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn