Nobody to lean on

“Lean on me, when you’re not strong….”

“I love rock and roll”…

They are a dying breed as a new breed emerges: COVID-19.

All that living. Now all that dying.

“We all need somebody to lean on”.

My nephew often had his white gloves handy at family funerals, a series of them over the year. In his quiet way, he assumes the pallbearer role.

“The things he carries.”

“He ain’t heavy, he is my brother”.

Demographers put 78.8 as the number for male average life expectancy.

That put the draftees (to Vietnam), the draft dodgers (to Canada) and anyone on campus – Kent State to Penn State – to be near the far-end.

With COVID-19, more names will be on the wall, til we run out of black granite.

A wall of people who grew hair (….down to his knees…) who “come together…right now”.

Even the act of just ” walk in to a church, ….pretend to pray” or crossing the street (Abbey Road) is hip let alone staying up all night, for three nights…as in the last morning of Woodstock ( blanket for two).

“Life is but the song we sing, fear is the way we die”….Between birth and burial, we experience life and experience it together. Shared moments. Dig it?

Less is more. Elegant. Minimal footprints and imprints.

Just live. Just share, since there is a boat load of sadness and sorrow. When you’re down….lean on me. When you’re up, love rock and roll.

After you’re gone, your shoulders are of no use to anyone, but your songs sung on. That’s with singers and songwriters whose “sad guitar gently weeps”.

“…..and your face when you’re leaving…you always smile, but in your eyes your sorrow shows…. Yes it shows”.

It’s that obvious??? That 78.8 years are not enough for passion and compassion? for loving and learning? And barely enough time to cross that street, Abbey or otherwise. “Strumming my pain with his fingers…”.

Stay cool, stay hip. And stay alive. See you on the other side…of COVID-19 or that door. We’re all “riders in the storm”…”against the wind”….this time around, with no one to lean on. Each on our own, a breath away from everything near and dear, fretfully and fearfully.

“You hold the key to love and fear, all in your trembling hand…C’mon people now, smile on your brother everybody get together, try to love one another right now. “