Day 159
Had it not been for the moonlessness of the night and the fact that John actually was not on the stage … tonight’s John Denver concert was lovely and nearly perfect.
It was a gorgeous evening up at Red Rocks (if you are unfamiliar with it – google it as it’s an amazing amphitheatre!) … a happy gathering of John Denver fans of yore, a balmy evening, a light breeze, the Colorado Chamber Orchestra and John Adams … who sang (and at times sounded eerily like JD) many of the old favorites.
Sam got us tickets for my birthday and … what a nice night! She packed a fabulous picnic dinner and we sat on our blanket, 10 rows up from the stage and it was sublime. And, at certain times, and during certain songs, if you closed your eyes you might actually think it was John Denver up on stage singing those ballads. John Adams was amazingly good.
The best John Denver concert I was at (and I went to MANY) was right after his Shanghai Breezes album came out. Tim and I were up at Red Rocks late one August. John was in his element – he loved playing at Red Rocks and he loved Colorado. The concert was wonderful, the sky was purple and a huge, orange full harvest moon rose up in the east and seemed to hang over the stage. It was breathtaking and a glorious evening.
When John Denver died in 1997, he was flying his experimental plane when it crashed along the California coast. As badly as I felt about his death – I was thankful he was doing something he so enjoyed at that time. We should all be so lucky.
I planted an Ohio Buckeye in our backyard the following spring in his memory. It’s hard to believe that tree is already 14 years old. The new owners of the house know all about its history! But where does the time go?!
The day of Tim’s first infusion at the hospital, we met the couple who was sharing the infusion cubicle with us that day. After introductions I said that we weren’t going to concentrate on dying because there were so many better ways to die than from cancer. I continued on to say that if we had to die – it should be like John Denver, doing what we loved. The couple stared at me and then asked me why I had said that … and I told them simply that his music was such a part of my life and that I admired him and I planted the tree and about all the concerts we enjoyed as a couple and family … etcetera. As it turned out – the husband of the woman having chemo treatment had been John Denver’s pilot for 20 some years! Now how weird was THAT?!
Anyway, thank you Sam and thank you John Adams for bringing to us both such nice memories of concerts past and long ago nights of listening to song after song of John Denver. (My poor roommates in college … hours and hours and hours of the same album!) And because it was John Adams and not John Denver up on that stage and it was not Tim but Sam by my side I could not hold back the tears – as they brought forth such strong emotions of love and loss and memories of times past. And those tears mingled with the ones that came forth due to the beauty of the evening and the fact that Sam WAS by my side and that she had made this wonderful evening happen. Because of or despite of those things … and the re-realization of how unifying and soul-stirring music is … it was a nearly perfect evening.