Cemetery Walk, Olivia Rodrigo, and Feeling The Feels

I was still feeling sore today. Not enough to stop me from being active, but enough for my brain to talk me out of being active(damn you, brain.) Still, common sense and the need for some quality sunshine prevailed over ‘Lazy John’ and his whispers of “nah, just go home”. I headed to the Beyer Trail just about five minutes from work. It’s a trail that goes through wetlands near the hospital. It takes you through this boggy area that leads to Pike Lake, a small beach and summer RV camping area. It also goes right by the back side of Oakwood Cemetery, where I spent most of my walk today.

I don’t know what my fascination with cemeteries is. Maybe it’s the ritual of them that attracts me. I’m not a morbid person. I do love all things horror, so maybe that’s part of it. I certainly don’t prescribe to the idea of being planted into the ground in an overpriced pine box lined in velvet, with a hefty chunk of granite shading my eternal resting hole.

I’m 99% sure I plan on being cremated. Then, my wife and children can do with my cremains what they wish; dump me in a local lake, spread me in my grandkids sandbox(like I’ll have grandkids and who does sandboxes anymore?), or mix me in some nice, earthy Indiana clay and throw me on the wheel and make a nifty vase from my ashes.

These are only suggestions. They won’t be part of my last will and testament.

Even though I don’t plan on being buried, I do respect those that do want that for themselves. Cemeteries carry with them a lot of sentiment, and I think of myself as a very sentimental person. Just look at some of the gravestones in your local cemetery. Pictures of loved ones, motorcycles, tractors, engraved portraits….they’re stories on those slabs of granite. Stories being told by the dead, or the loved ones of the dead. Their greatest attributes permanently engraved in rock for all to see for eternity. Maybe they weren’t all that great in real life, but in death they can be memorialized as a fan of motorbikes, rock and roll, and John Deere.

There’s something moving about that.

You’re summing up that loved one’s life on that rock. Even old gravestones at least point out who the dead were to them; “Mother”, “Father”, “Daughter”, “Son”. No tractors, but you get the gist of who they were in life. Even if it’s just a place for a loved one to come and sit quietly, or to yell into the void hoping some cosmic force will relay the message, I find the experience and the presence of a cemetery as being as close to spiritual and holy as I think I can get.

I have a few loved ones in Oakwood, but most of my family are in a county north of here. I took my mom over there a few years ago. We visited her dad, then we drove about two miles the opposite direction to visit her mom in another cemetery.

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So I had no idea that Olivia Rodrigo was a Disney kid. Up until the last couple weeks I’d never even heard any of her music. On one of the streaming services we watch there’s a commercial for Air Pods or Tide Pods or something and it’s Olivia Rodrigo singing her song “Bad Idea Right?”. The song grabbed me instantly. I knew of Olivia Rodrigo, but I had no idea what her songs sounded like. I wrongly assumed it was the typical over-produced pop that plays on the radio(does radio exist anymore?) This song had great melodies, earworm hooks, and had a sense of humor to it. And I got all that in like 30 seconds.

Today I decided to listen to a bit of her new album GUTS on the way home after the walk. I was blown away. I’ve only heard the first four songs, but I was hooked. I’m a nearly 50-year old Midwestern schlub and I was totally falling for Ms. Rodrigo’s stories of bad choices, heartbreak, and being your true self. What I heard reminded me of early 2000s alternative/emo/pop punk. None of those were genres I was listening to back then, but there were some bands I liked in that category. Fountains of Wayne, Dashboard Confessional, and Motion City Soundtrack were a few(though FoW were more like power pop to me, but anyways).

The song that hit me the hardest was “vampire”. Maybe because it reminded me of Radiohead’s “Creep”, or Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself”. I felt the hurt in that song, man. And Olivia Rodrigo can sing, folks. This song is big, dramatic, melancholic, and there’s an urgency to it. It has a “learn from me” feel. Of course when it comes to love and relationships we don’t learn until it happens to us, too.

I think having two kids that went through pretty rough break ups has opened me up a bit. I saw the affect of a broken heart had on them, and hearing Ms. Rodrigo sing her goddamned heart out hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting.

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The older we get the more fragile physically we become. It’s life, man. We’re like furniture. That old oak rocking chair that’s been handed down generation to generation was once a strong, formidable rocker. It offered itself up to years of rocking and consoling. But eventually it wears out and becomes nothing more than a museum piece. Nice to look at, but don’t sit on it or it will splinter and collapse.

I’m not splintering and collapsing, but I hope you know what I mean. I guess emotionally I’m more fragile than I used to be as well, but I see that as a good thing. My head and heart are far more open than they used to be. If I’m sad or mad or freaked out I talk about it. I don’t keep it in. If you’re a regular reader of these digital pages you are quite aware of that fact. And I’m all the better for it, I think.

Turning 50 is affecting me far more than I ever thought it would. I was kind of freaked out, but I’m coming around to it. I’ve got nothing to freak out about. I’ve got a wife I’ve loved for well over half my life, and children that have all become beautiful, thoughtful, funny adults that I love being around. I have coffee every Saturday morning with my 77 year old dad. A mom that I love making laugh whenever we talk, and an older brother that while we don’t see each other often when we do I cherish every moment.

Our family isn’t big, but it’s formidable.

This is what Tuesday walks in cemeteries do to me.