Daron's Guitar Chronicles Vol. 13 (contd)

1108 Here's Where The Story Ends

Here's Where The Story Ends

Court and I stayed for a few more days in Tennessee after everyone else went home, to help Janine cope and to "be there" for Landon.

I didn't really know what "being there" would entail, but it turns out that literally just being there was good. I have no idea how a six-year-old processes that his grandmother is gone, especially when she'd essentially disappeared from his life six months earlier, which is forever at that age. But apparently having a favorite aunt and uncle around helped. After we'd said goodbye to everyone who'd come to the funeral, we moved out of the hotel and into Janine's house for half a week.

Speaking of goodbyes, I should tell you about the goodbye hug I had with Colin, because I know you'll appreciate it.

I remember the hug, I just don't remember exactly when it happened. It was at one of the stops on the Claire Farewell Tour, probably the reception at the hotel. A good, long hug from Colin made all kinds of things loosen up in my brain and my chest.

He asked when I was coming home. And it struck me, oh, yeah, what's next? Where's next? Almost a year earlier, Ziggy and I had put off making any long term plans about where–and how–we were going to live. There'd been the couple of months where we were in Boston trying to get healthy in body and mind–cut short by the whole Claire affair, but which would have been over by now even if we'd stayed.

It had been a good couple of months for us in Boston, even if there had been some angst. You know: my head feeling done in by the explosion of Nirvana, Ziggy feeling like grunge signaled the death of glam, us not listening to each other... That all seemed like small potatoes compared to the big stuff that had happened. The so-called big picture. Like us learning to trust each other, and losing our moms, and... holy shit, ending the lawsuits and resurrecting our band...?

Remember when I said I wanted to shoot the moon? I woke up the morning after Ziggy's confession about what he did to Digger, exhausted, wrung out, but I felt... good.

I should have felt like there were gaping holes in my chest, but I patted myself like I'd woken up from a dream expecting to find bullet wounds and instead, everything was whole.

I lay there in the dark, only a crack of daylight making it around the far edge of the blackout curtain, thinking about shooting the moon and realizing we'd done it. Ziggy had done it.

All the pieces that had been floating around the board, all of the moves made by all the people in our lives–Barrett, Patty, Carynne, Jordan (god rest his soul), our lawyers, even Janessa and Jonathan–all lined up like the tumblers and pins in a lock. And Ziggy had the key in his back pocket.

The door was open now and it was up to us to step through it.

Funny thing about that door. When I was young and unsigned and desperate to make it, getting a foot in the door was the most important thing. You hammer on that door, try to beat it down, but all you can see is that door is there to keep you out. Once it cracks open, of course you rush through it, eager to leap right into the mosh pit at the party you've been trying to get into all your life.

Now I knew that the door was also there to keep you in. The big lesson I'd learned thanks to the water tank: you can't just do it for the sake of doing it. Well, maybe some people could, but I couldn't. If I loved myself, I had to love what I was doing, and if I didn't love myself, I was going to end up dead. I'd also learned that to love someone else, I had to love myself first, or my heart wasn't strong enough to take it.

I'd seen my mother through to the end and it hadn't destroyed me. In fact, maybe my heart was stronger than ever? Battered, bruised, exhausted, but... beating steady. Conquering the pain in my fingers would be trivial by comparison. Returning to reasonable playing form seemed nearer, more attainable, than it had even a week before.