A Fitting Honor

The event to honor Robert Busby in Old Town Wednesday night went very well. They closed off Turner street and the crowd took up a lot of space, that was a really good move. The State Journal estimated there were 250 of us. (From my years in the restaurant business, I wonder if there might have been more.) I was amazed at how many of the folks I knew, at least in some small way.

There were so many people there, from so many segments of Lansing… there were artists, musicians, theatre people, business owners, residents of Old Town, family members, local government folks, old, young, straight, gay, many ethnic backgrounds, many income levels… a zillion of Robert’s friends (most in at least one of the other categories).

This man was such a fine person that everyone felt loved by him. I am not surprised at the turnout. I am grateful that it was 42 degrees F with no snow or rain for several hours while folks gathered and made more connection with one another. It’s something Robert would very much have liked seeing.

We all took turns talking or not, crying or not, hugging or not. There was much comfort in being together in those numbers, especially when I saw so many folks who I knew.

So I’ve cried a lot, I will no doubt shed a few more tears but the sharing of grief is called mourning and it is an important part of going forward. As a knitting friend said today, when you have a loss of this type, it is like a wound to the skin. It heals over and the wound fills with scar tissue. You go forward but the truth is that it’s still a scar, you are not the way you were before. You just learn to go on with the new situation.

Turning it Around a Little

So I’ve been doing more to find comfort. I listened to the Teletubbies theme song, for starters. They just plain make me smile, you don’t have to agree but it works for me.

You see, in Teletubbyland nothing bad ever happens. The worst that goes wrong is a mess, usually spilled food, and the Noo-Noo always appears to clean up, no questions asked, no problems. I like this idea. I want a Noo-Noo!

I also listened to Annette Hanshaw again. Annette’s MySpace page right now has the song “If You Want the Rainbow, You Must Have the Rain,” in the full length version. I listened to that one a few times. It’s not like we love the rain, but it is part of the cycles of living on this earth.

I had a good dinner, am drinking some good tea, and then I will be spending a little time with Brian playing music, just after midnight. After a bit of rehearsal, he will go up to sleep and I’ll stay up longer and do some work down here in the quiet.

I love working in the quiet at night. Too bad that for some reason I keep waking up early this week! It’s a not-enough-sleep week but I used to do that every week and try to make it up on the weekends. This is not nearly as bad as those years.

Off to make music and then put pretty colors together. I won’t take these “small” pleasures for granted today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 12:08 amand is filed under Lansing, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.