Roll The Bones*
In Which 55,000 Miles Seems Like Just The Start of The Journey...
They say take it slow But the world keeps spinning And that I don’t control And so there I go Trying to act normal So they won't know that... ~ Hold It Together (Mike Shinoda)
This is the core of it…
I’ve always been fascinated by death and dying. I can’t pinpoint exactly why- I don’t have some comic-book style origin story where I saw someone die right before my eyes, or accidentally killed a man while driving at night as a teen, or something like that. Perhaps we’re all as intrigued by death as I am. Who knows?
What I can say is that since I was a teen I’ve had a thought that I have come back to time and time again: I don’t think I’m meant to die of old age in my bed, peacefully surrounded by loved ones where there is one last final breath and… Into the darkness I go.
I’ve often thought that I would end my own life with a walk into the wilderness. Just… Disappearing from this world. Or… Well… Disappearing from your world, I suppose. What would happen in the woods? I have a pretty good idea what that would look like, but like Gandalf, I still have some secrets I want to hold onto.
I’ve had several Dark Nights Of The Soul over the course of my life where I almost did just that… Walk away from it all.
And yet (at least so far, 50 years into this thing) I haven’t wanted to just disappear with no warning or explanation. It doesn’t seem right that those left behind would be stuck spending the rest of their days wondering what happened to me. Ending my pain but imparting trauma on others in the process doesn’t seem right.
I don’t say any of this to be dramatic. Or as a hint, or a threat of some sort. Or even as a veiled plea for you to reach out to say something. Please, please don’t. I don’t want to know what you think about this, and the honest truth is: I don’t really care.
I’m just reporting this as a stage-setting to the rest of what I want to share here.
On August 10th 1997, Neil Ellwood Peart’s 19-year-old daughter Selena was killed in a car crash. According to official records she simply fell asleep while driving back to school one night and… tragically died in the crash that resulted. At night. In the dark. Alone.
Less than 5 months later, in January 1998, Peart’s common-law wife of 23 years, Jacqueline (Jackie to those who knew her) was diagnosed with a fast moving cancer, and by June of 1998 she was also dead. She was 42, and Peart was 45.
If you were to examine the medical records I’m sure they would state that she succumbed to cancer, but according to Peart, Jackie’s death was less due to the cancer and more the result of a broken heart at the loss of their daughter, and in his words, a “slow suicide by apathy.”
Jackie, bereft at the loss of her only daughter no longer cared to live. The cancer was merely the inciting incident.
In the space of 10 months Neil had his only child who was just entering the prime of her life and his wife of over 2 decades… everything that really mattered, everything that kept him grounded and connected to his place and time in the woven tapestry of his existence- forcibly removed from him. Fuck you, Atropos.
He did the only thing he could think to do in that season of abject grief…
He sold his house, climbed on a motorcycle, and proceeded to spend the next 3 years and over fifty-five thousand miles disconnected and traveling all over Canada, the United States, and down into South America. By himself. Writing. Seeing. Taking photographs. Grieving.
What was he looking for?
This is conjecture on my part, but I think he was looking for something, or someone to connect him back into this temporally bound amusement park ride called “being human”… Or some sort of internal permission to make his disconnection complete.
In 2001 he finally discovered a reason to plug back in (as it were) and, among other thing, set about the process of compiling his notes, journal entries, and writings into what would become a book.
The reason?
I’ve stolen enough of this man’s story for this essay, so if you really want to know, you’ll have to buy the book. (Or buy me a beer the next time we get together and I’ll tell you. I’m certain Peart would approve of this compromise! 🤣)
If the name Neil Peart sounds at all familiar to you, it is because he spent 41 years as the drummer (and primary lyricist) for the Canadian rock band Rush.
Rush is a band I was introduced to in the 7th grade by a handful of my fellow Band Geeks in the brass section of the Jr. High School band, where I played the Trumpet. I was a mediocre Trumpet player on my best day, and would soon shift my focus from Trumpet to Baritone.
Not that I was much better there, but I would play in various marching, jazz, and traditional bands well into my college years… continuing mostly in mediocrity the entire time. (This particular group of young musicians also introduced me to The Beastie Boys, sooo… It wasn’t ALL nerd rock… OK, it was mostly nerd rock. 😉)
In June of 2002 when the book Peart wrote about his travels and observations over those 3 harrowing years of his life was finally published, I was standing in line at midnight outside of Tower Records in downtown Seattle to buy a copy of the memoir, entitled: Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. Much to the displeasure of my wife Carin, who I’d been married to at that point for 4 months and who did not understand why I was so interested in this book. In this topic. Why I needed to be out in the middle of the night in an (admittedly) kinda sketchy part of Seattle.
(Sidebar: It would take us both more than a decade, and getting kicked out of the cult-adjacent fundamentalist church we were both members of due to… having ideas… as well as a whole lot of marriage counseling to really come to peace with the idea that spouses are whole and completely separate and autonomous entities apart from their marriage. But that’s a post for another time.)
I remember hearing in the immediate aftermath of the twin tragedies Peart experienced (likely on MTV) that Rush was taking an indefinite hiatus, or (so the rumor mill squawked) perhaps the band was done for good…
Years later in 2002 I also remember sitting up until the small hours of the night with my newly purchased book… Reading and feeling heartbroken for this man and also (selfishly) for the music I would not get to experience as a result of these cruel twists of fate and the lost years that resulted… Something which is the very definition of a “parasocial relationship response” in an era before having parasocial relationships was even a glimmer in the eye of the internet, and terms like “Social Media” and “Influencer” had yet to be coined.
I have to admit that at the time the primary thing which really drew me into his writing was the adventure… the freedom… the fantasy of being able to go wherever I wanted, live by my rules alone, and see “the world” with a giant middle finger to any sense of responsibility… Really, it was the abject lack of responsibility that was most interesting to my mid-20s self.
At the time these were the messages that resonated for this particular dumb kid who grew up pretty sheltered, and hadn’t yet experienced any of the inevitable sharp edges and rusty corners that life bangs our shins against on the journey. I’d had yet to experience any real personal heartbreak.
The me of today reflects on what Neil Peart went through, and understands this mans journey in a way that dumb kid never could have. My wife died a week short of her 47th birthday due to Sudden Cardiac Death… An event that was both shocking in it’s abruptness, and at the same time not all that unique or special when I consider the grand expanse of time outside of my personal experience…
And so here I am. Not on a motorcycle, and not running from anything, exactly… But not entirely standing still either. There’s a rhythm in the ache, in the wandering of thought and memory, in the soft but persistent throb of absence.
Some days feel like never-ending echoes of conversations that will never happen again, the way light lingers after the sun drops below the horizon. Other days, it’s just about getting through the day without unraveling. Occasionally (especially as time relentlessly marches towards the anniversary of Carin’s death) there is no avoiding the breakdown, and the job is picking up the pieces and trying to somehow plow forward anyway…
The truth is, I don’t know what healing looks like, or if healing is even the right word for what I’m doing. Maybe it’s not about mending something at all. Maybe it’s about learning to carry something unbearably heavy without dropping it all the time.
There’s something I find oddly comforting about the idea that Peart rode through deserts and over mountains alone with his grief. At first the grief doing the driving; heartbreak determining the direction of travel which (according to Peart’s account) was as primal as letting fate determine whether to go left or right at every crossroads encountered, with no destination in mind at all.
Then eventually, grief riding pillion, its arms wrapped tightly around Peart’s waist, leaning into each curve, one with him and the bike. And finally, all too slowly… grief shifting positions to ride along, as though in a sidecar. Present. Insistent. But also… no longer clinging. No longer steering.
Perhaps that’s what I’m aiming for too. Not closure, not peace, not even clarity. Just… movement.
Forward, sideways, in circles if I have to. Maybe it’s about letting the road shape me instead of trying to shape the road. I don’t have a map, or even a reliable compass, but I do have motion. And for now, that might be enough.
Will I need 55,000 miles of traveling on a motorcycle to heal? I have no idea, but I guess I have no choice but to take the ride and see…
*We go out in the world and take our chances Fate is just the weight of circumstances That's the way that lady luck dances Roll the bones Roll the bones ~ Roll The Bones (Rush)