I am very close to both of my parents, but I am my father’s daughter. It was my dad who would wake me up after my brother was asleep so I could watch scary movies with my parents. My dad would play a song he thought it was important for me to hear. I heard most of the music that would become my favorite because my dad introduced them to me.
When I was a kid my dad had a paper route he did over his lunch break and on weekends. Since I enjoyed spending time with my dad and riding in cars, I would go with him when I didn’t have school. He always played cassette tapes for these drives; two of them made a huge impression. One was a mix of Bob Dylan songs Dad put together. The other was a mix my Uncle Dan made called “Various Slabs of Rock”.
Both of these tapes were made from records my dad and his brother listened to repeatedly, so you could hear the delicious pops and crackles from the vinyl. I don’t remember everything from Various Slabs of Rock, just The Band, War, Neil Young, and Lou Reed. “Dad, play that wild side song.” I borrowed that tape for extended periods of time, and that song was my favorite.
I was 10 or 11 when I first heard Lou Reed. After I got my first job at 15, I used the money I didn’t save to amass a music collection, including The Velvet Underground discography and Reed’s solo work. My consumption of that music became compulsive and ritualistic. I spent Friday nights in my room listening in the dark. “You know, your dad used to do that,” my mom would point out. Yeah, neither of us got out very much.
Of course, there is Transformer, the most accessible album, which I use to get my friends to listen to Lou Reed and still take on car rides with fellow travelers. And there is New York for when I feel punky and disillusioned, Berlin for heartbreak, Magic and Loss for a death, Kill Your Sons for anger, New Age for longing, and Sweet Jane for freedom. Lou Reed sings from right next to me; his songs are a conversation between the two us.
I jokingly wondered aloud Sunday why I was so upset about Reed’s death. I mean, "it’s not like he was my dad," I said. The association is there, though. My dad is only six years younger than Lou Reed was. In the 1950s when Reed was undergoing electroshock treatment, my dad was growing up Catholic in a small Indiana town. In 1968, when Reed was hanging out at The Factory, Dad was serving in the Air Force overseas. In the 1970s when Reed was doing lots of drugs, my dad was sitting in the dark in his apartment listening to Lou Reed records.
I have been feeling alternately sad and ecstatic the last few days, and I realized that I am not just grieving for Reed. I am coming to terms with the fact my dad is going to die someday. Of course, I have always known this. Dad is a person; people die. I just never prepared myself for the possibility. I have been faced with my mom’s death many times. She has been ill for most of my life, and she has nearly died several times. Each time, my dad and I worked as a team taking care of Mom, my brother, and the house. As sick as it sounds, I could and can imagine life without my mom because of those experiences. Life without my dad is unimaginable.
Grief is weird. You don’t know what will affect you or how you will comfort yourself. When my uncle died (not the one who made the tape) I tracked down and repeatedly looked though family photos. After a traumatic breakup with a longtime boyfriend, I rekindled my obsession with horror movies (horror pretty much saved me) and listened to Berlin. Right now, I am drinking, listening to Lou Reed’s discography, and thinking about my dad. When I get five tracks into Transformer and hear that bass start, I am immediately back in Dad’s car, stuffing ads into newspapers and asking if he could please play that wild side song again.
