I'll See You In My Dreams

 Eight years turns out to be quite a long time. 

The last time I saw Bruce Springsteen, COVID had not happened. Barack Obama was still president. My mother was still alive. 

This past Thursday, I heard Bruce sing those lines from "Atlantic City," - Everything dies baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

I burst into tears. All that grief and loss came flooding back in that moment and for the first time that evening, I was quiet. I felt the music take me away to a place where there was hope once again. 

And I thought about how much I wish that I had been able to drag my mom to a Springsteen show. 

All the music she shared with me for all those years: show tunes, operas, classical interludes, piano duets. And when it came time for her to listen to my music, she was as open as anyone could be. She was always excited to experience what her sons were excited about. I was able to convert her without ever getting her to a concert. Three hours of "earth-shocking, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, earth-quaking" rock and roll might not have been the best plan for a woman of her age. 

Yet, there I was, last Thursday night, standing in a crowd of men and women in their sixties and older watching a seventy-four year old man lead us all in a cathartic ritual of anthems and hymns to redemption. On the way in, I compared notes with my fellow attendees. My first Springsteen concert was in 1981. The guy I was sitting next to had me beat by five years. We welcomed a young lady in her forties to her first show. 

With the exception of those moments mentioned earlier, and the occasional comments shared with my wife, I sang along. As I always have. Because this was my church, and these were the people. The only thing missing was the steeple. 

The last time I saw Bruce, he and I shared a deep connection with our mothers. Time had recently changed that connection. Not severed, but altered. He sang songs about friends that had left and passed. I sang along. From my seat in the basketball stadium, I had a night of catharsis. And after all the big noise was done, and the encores were complete, he sent the band away and returned to sing one last song: 

Yeah, up around the river bend
For death is not the end
And I'll see you in my dreams