I’m not sure if this is normal, unhealthy or just odd, but every few nights I feel compelled to just have a drink and embrace my grief. I spend most of my time consciously trying to look forward in search of a future, though admittedly with mostly limited success at this point. But then I’ll feel a compulsion to wallow in it. The past few weeks I have gone through a ritual periodically where I pour myself a rye whiskey and play sad tunes and reminisce. My favorite songs so far are:
I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues
We All Fall In Love Sometimes/Curtains
(The last line of Curtains makes me cry every single time I play it…
“And just like us,
you must have had
a once upon a time”
Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
(Too much Elton John? Sorry, I’m a 70’s & 80’s child.)
“Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M.
“Turn The Page” by Bob Seger
Her favorite song. This one my wife had me pull that up on my phone every night before bed for a couple of years straight. Can’t play it without thinking of her. Impossible.
Anything by Neil Diamond, who she loved almost more than me. I have even just pulled up Neil Diamond on Pandora and let it roll. I have memories of her to just about every song he ever sang.
“You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban. This one makes the cut because I got to choose one song to be played at her Celebration of Life and this was the song I chose.
So far haven’t ended the evening with dry eyes. I’m not sure if this habit is unhealthy or makes me seem a bit neurotic, but I do find it to be therapeutic. I’m not sure it is for everybody and certainly nothing to try if you don’t feel so compelled.
You do you, whatever you need to get through. The other day, the grief was building so I put on the songs from his celebration of life and just sobbed. I felt better after and have many good days in-between. I live in the now as looking ahead is too painful. My future is a huge loss and all the plans we made are gone. So I live in the now!
I have found found lots of solace in music too ! Nothing wrong with that ! My husband loved neil diamond …
.must play some of his tunes ! Ive been listening to Barbra streisand recently , songs from a star is born … which i went to see when i was young i.loved it … funny how.we go back in time ! Xx
I still find a lot of music really difficult to listen to, I changed my radio habits to avoid those ‘our tunes’ ambushing me. It’s probably something I should address, but hey! I’ll get to it, I know theres a lot of stuff in there I need to unpack, one step at a time as we all know. One song that i have come across that just did it for me was one that my wife and i had no connection to but really spoke to me of how I was feeling, I’ve posted it elsewhere before but thought it might fit better here:
And that made me go off and listen to the first song my wife ever played me, I say played it was playing the first time I went to her flat and I’d never heard it before. It’s how I think of my wife and what she encapsulated.
“Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe
And I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we’ll laugh and toast to nothing
Smash our empty glasses down”
I will never be able to listen to albatross by Fleetwood Mac without crying. It was his favourite and wanted it as the recessional at his funeral which of course it was. Xx
@AceHigh I just go with how I’m feeling at the time, The other day I was getting organised to go away and a song kept coming into my head. I decided to just listen on repeat and got all the tears and desperation out. It really did me good, as people say theres on rules, just do you and look at how it changes the way you feel. We’re all making it up as we go along now, no rules, no map.
I remember the Monday after he went I had the radio on and suddenly Queen’s “Who wants to live forever” (Classical version on Classic FM) came on and I just couldn’t stop crying. We didn’t particularly like Queen but the song was in one of his favourite films “Highlander”. Songs definitely help because it is not healthy to suppress any feelings.
This is my turn up full blast and sing. I don’t cry to this one and we had it as montage song. I remember all of his good bits. I remember the good times of us.
My wife and I played in a musical duo for the past 13 years…her last performance was 15 November 2022…she went into hospital 6 days later…and that was that. I can’t listen easily to any recordings we made on which she sang…I want to but it just destroys me…I have hours of video too…I guess it’s a legacy for the future…hopefully I can get over this…ironically the first song she wrote and recorded was called “Days of Our Lives”
i.loved it … funny how.we go back in time ! Xx
