This Weight

There are some songs that stop being songs.

They become memories.
Time capsules.
Conversations with people you can no longer reach any other way.

For me, "This Weight" was never just music playing in the background. Van Morrison was woven into my childhood memories for as long as I can remember.

Enough that his voice became familiar in a way I can't fully explain.

That smooth saxophone.
That raspy voice.
The warmth in the music.

It felt like home.

The kind of sound that settles into the background of your life so deeply that years later, one note can bring your entire childhood rushing back into your chest at once.

Long drives to Minnesota.
Quiet evenings.
Music drifting through the house while life still felt ordinary and safe.

My parents loved music in a way that shaped our entire home life. They had gone to more than 150 concerts throughout their lives, and honestly, they were some of the coolest people I knew.

Every house we lived in had a music room. Not just a room with speakers in it - an actual music room.

Shelves full of old records.
Stacks of CDs.
Record players.
Huge speakers.
Posters on the walls.
Concert memories attached to almost every artist they played.

Music was always somewhere in the background of our lives.

Cleaning the house.
Driving at night.
Sitting outside in the summer.
Cooking dinner.
Laughing in the living room.
Talking about concerts they had gone to before I was even born.

Looking back now, I think music became the emotional language of our family.

Music wasn't just entertainment in our house.

It was connection.
Memory.
Comfort.
Identity.

Some people might say I stayed attached to my parents for too long. Maybe they'd say I needed to "get my own life."

But what people don't understand is that creating distance from them would have meant breaking an attachment I was never emotionally ready to break.

Because they made me happy.

I genuinely loved being around them.

And honestly, I think people underestimate how rare that actually is.

So many people grow up counting down the days until they can leave home forever. I never felt that way.

Home felt safe to me.

Even when life became complicated, even when I got older, even when the world expected me to emotionally separate more, a part of me still felt safest knowing my parents were there.

And honestly, I think I knew from a very young age that losing them would one day become the hardest thing I'd ever have to survive.

When I was little, I would panic whenever my mom traveled for work. My dad would make sure I talked to her while she was gone because hearing her voice was the only thing that could calm me down enough to breathe normally again.

I needed reassurance she was coming home.
That this wasn't forever.
That I wasn't losing her.

Most people probably assumed I outgrew that fear.

I never really did.

As I got older, it simply expanded.

And somewhere along the way, it became about both of them.

My dad was technically my stepdad, but that word has never emotionally existed for me.

He came into my life when I was four years old, and from that point forward, he was simply my dad.

Nothing less.
Nothing "step" about it.

He taught me kindness.
Empathy.
How to accept people for who they are.
How to stand up for myself.
How to know my worth.
How to never allow anyone to make me feel less than.
How to care deeply.
How to laugh loudly.
How to make people feel welcome.

A lot of who I am emotionally came from him.

He always reminded me of the potential he saw in me.

Even when I doubted myself, he didn't.

No matter how lost I felt at different points in my life, he genuinely believed I was capable of building a meaningful life for myself.

He believed I could do great things long before I fully believed it myself.

And honestly, ever since I left home five years ago, that's what I had been trying to do.

I wanted him to see me become independent.
Stable.
Strong.
Okay on my own.

Not because I stopped loving home.
But because I loved them enough to want them to know they didn't have to worry about me forever.

Sometimes it honestly feels like a movie when I think about the timing of everything.

That I finally came back right before losing him.
That I was finally becoming who I was supposed to become right as time was running out.

There's a specific kind of heartbreak that comes from finally becoming the person you wanted your parents to see you become while simultaneously realizing they may not be here long enough to fully witness it.

I don't know if I'll ever fully get over that part.

I just hope he knew that even during the years I was gone, I never stopped worrying about him and my mom.

I never stopped missing home.
I never stopped wanting to come back.

But I also think part of me knew I needed to leave in order to grow up.

I was the baby of the family.

And truthfully, I don't think any of us really knew how to let go of each other completely.

Sometimes I wonder if he understood that before I did.

Sometimes I wonder if part of him knew he might not be here much longer.

Now I think maybe he was trying to prepare me for exactly that.

The day of my dad's funeral, I couldn't move.

Then my music shuffled.

"This Weight" started playing.

I completely lost it.

Then another Van Morrison song played.
Then another.
Then another.

Back to back.
On shuffle.

Maybe some people would call that coincidence.

But grief changes your relationship with coincidence.

Sometimes the heart recognizes things logic cannot fully explain.

That song became something different after that.

Not just music.
Not just nostalgia.
Not just grief.

A reminder.

That love does not disappear simply because someone's body does.

The pain came from having nowhere for all that love to go afterward.

So it turns into memory.
Music.
Stories.
Certain streets.
Old cars.
Dashboard tapping.
Songs playing at impossible moments when your heart is breaking open.

And maybe that's all grief really is in the end: love with nowhere physical left to land.

But every once in a while, if we're lucky, something reaches back.