Pop 89: Forever and Ever, Anyway
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
“I hate to say it, but I haven’t laughed that hard in ages,” admitted one of the local ranchers, standing in line at the luncheon table. We were at a funeral reception. What they call a Celebration of Life in some parts. (Later, I told my friend, Avril, I wanted some heavy-duty grieving at my funeral. “At least for the first week. Then you can celebrate me after you mourn and wail.” “Gotcha,” she said, “all-out keening, I’ll remember that.”
Our community hall, The Palais Royale, has seen little activity lately. No movies or dances and only one wedding reception in two years. And last week, we had a talk on snakes given by a young woman from our park, Grasslands National Park, dedicated to winning the public over to her favourite reptiles. Snakes are cool, she said, pointing to a pair of sunglasses, an icon for cool, and proceeded to tell stories about some drama-queen snakes she knows. She won me over, and I offered some snake stories of my own.
I counted five rattlers, one bull and a handful of dead garter snakes this summer on The Butte. One rattler I located by its rattle, which blended almost seamlessly into a choir of frenetic crickets giving a last concert of the season. I passed it, then walked back to the bush from which the sound was emitting. And there it was, hunkered into a coil, hiding and warning me and my snake-shy hiking friends to stay away. I brought them over to get a look.
“Snakes are as afraid of you as you are of them,” said the Grasslands park woman. “So, don’t buy the vicious lies you hear. But don’t get too close. There’s so much misinformation because of cultural prejudice against snakes. Any questions?” But nobody had any, so I pulled out a list. “You certainly came prepared,” she commented. “Dahling, you’re the cultural event of the season,” I replied.
Blaine Clement was not yet sixty. Ranching friends came from far and wide to the funeral reception. The hall was packed. People wore masks. We followed protocol. Still, there were far too many leftover egg sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies and peanut-butter squares because of a fear of germs. But the reception committee had done its duty. Every woman in town made up a loaf of sandwiches or a tray of squares. Men were asked to bring a jar or two of pickles. (This always makes me laugh. The men I know around here make better sandwiches than I do. They’ve been packing lunches for the range since they were teens and making lunches for kids since they were married.)
Judy put together a slide show of family photos of Blaine and his family and friends, set to a few country songs, tearjerkers that crack open the toughest of old cowboys and farmers. Earlier that morning, I watched part of the slideshow while dropping off my matrimonial squares. The songs brought me back to my days travelling with my ex’s blues band.
On our long drives between shows, the only music we listened to was country. Because that’s where all the stories are, he said. An African American, he got his first gig playing guitar and touring with a country band throughout the states. Check this out; he would say whenever Randy Travis or Trace Adkins came on the radio. In those days, it was Three Rugged Crosses; You’re Gonna Miss This and Carrie Underwood’s Jesus Take the Wheel. Each story had its own hook, as he called it. Its own surprise twist.
At the funeral reception, the slideshow songs were about legacies, what a guy would like to have said about him after he left the world. Which is basically that, as the Canadian band Emerson Drive puts it, he: “led a good life, loved a good wife, always helped somebody in trouble.”
Another was a song I hear played often at funerals and weddings, a testament to the universality of a good story, Forever and Ever, Amen. The chorus pretty much describes every social gathering in our village: “…old men sit and talk about the weather/ … old women sit and talk about old men.”
My favourite line goes: “They say time takes its toll on a body/Makes a young girl’s brown hair turn grey/but honey I don’t care/ I ain’t in love with your hair/if it all fell out/ I’d love you anyway.” (After a day of trying to review an academic text full of jargon like “the potential generativity of subjective rubrics for decolonial theorizing,” it doesn’t get better than a good ol’ country song.)
And just in case we weren’t already weeping, Luke Combs sings, “Just Cause I’m Leaving doesn’t mean I won’t be right by your side. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“I can’t do this,” we’ve all said, or will say, one day when someone we love dies. This song says I’ll be there; even when you can’t see me, you’ll feel me.
Country songs are unabashedly sentimental, and many go too far. Or not far enough. But the ones that work bring us together over a shared human feeling, usually a feeling of hurt.
After the songs came the laughter. Jimmy got up and told some stories about his best friend at the behest of the family. There were stories about hockey games and curling mishaps, broken machinery and Aunt Joyce’s pies. There were stories about childhood pranks and nicknames, about herding cattle and helping out. And one about snakes. Jimmy made us all laugh, and then he had the good grace to weep,” to fold like a cheap tent,” as he put it.
That’s how it’s done.
Good stories both crack us open and hold us together. They carry us through the hard times. They remind us that we are as afraid of others - and all their potential germs - as they are of us. Stories break through our crusty and stoic barriers, crumble grudges, and help us to love each other, again and forever and ever, anyway.
