Why “forgetting” is a Terrible Funeral Song.
I spent the Spring of 2023 at a small music school in Brentwood, TN. My roommate and I decided to get some hot chicken on our lunch break from a spot that was usually packed out. Sure enough, we walked in and ordered behind a line of 10 other people.
Waiting in one of those tall metal stools that chicken places usually have, I absentmindedly looked up at the TV. The news broadcast was muted.
“Shooter at Nashville’s Covenant School”
I was frozen for a long time. Eventually, I was angry that no one else was looking up at the TV. I heard someone laugh in the back of the restaurant, innocent and completely unaware. We ate, quietly watching, saying a few heavy words every once in a while.
I sat in my bed, watching all the other Nashville-area artists I know post their thoughts and prayers online. Poignant stuff. Some wrote angry songs, some mournful. But I just sat there, my guitar leaned up against the wall untouched. All I could write in my notebook was “I’m sorry for your loss”. Those words made my stomach turn over. How dare I? How dare I say something so reductive and empty? I cried hard because I couldn’t think of anything else to write down. Three kids and three adults were murdered with a weapon designed to do exactly that. Fifteen minutes up the road. These kids could have lived next door. I wondered if I had ever seen them at the park. I wondered if I had ever stood next to them in the grocery store. I didn’t write anything else about it for months.
A close family friend unexpectedly passed the following Summer. Without laying the details out, the funeral was one that left us with a terrible taste in our mouths. I thought of Covenant again. How dare any of us say that we’re “sorry”? When loss doesn't change us, how dare we act like it matters to us at all?
I was never able to write that perfect “thoughts and prayers” song. Never able to put enough poignant words together. “forgetting” is a terrible funeral song. I wrote it angry at myself and others for ever daring to say we’re “sorry for your loss”. I wrote it angry at everyone I saw pray tearful prayers and never do a damn thing differently.
If I’m really sorry, it’ll change the way I love others. If I’m really sorry, it’ll change the way I vote. If I’m really sorry, it’ll change the way I use my money.
It does nothing for anybody for me to sit alone in my room and be sad about something tragic that happened to someone else. It also does nothing for me to ignore it to spare myself the emotional pain and exhaustion. We cannot love with just our words or just our feelings, we need to love with our hands too.
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“Oh, I’m moved, just not out the door. Oh, I’m broken, just not at my core. Oh, I’m passionate, just ‘till I’m bored.”
- “forgetting” by Jachin McDonald
