The drinks bring back all the memories

I had never heard of the song “Memories” by Maroon 5 until a couple of my fellow grief group travelers were talking about it at a get-together we had last weekend. This morning, when I saw that one of the grief group members, Janet, posted the video on her FaceBook page, I clicked on the video and heard “Memories” for the first time. Janet posted the video with the following message to her husband, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer December 5, 2019 and died 6 months later:

“When Jim was sick and dying, I would hear this song all the time. I seem to be hearing it a lot lately! I miss and love you, Jim. Thank you for all the memories.”

The time this morning spent reading Janet’s words and hearing Adam Levine, Maroon 5's lead singer, embodied the words in “Memories.” It was a watershed (and waterfall of tears) moment for me. Janet’s message to her husband Jim (as a big aside here, when people asked Chip for his name and he said “Chip,” 8 times out of 10 the person would respond “Jim?”) and the lyrics in Levine’s song will be forever held in my heart, just as the Maroon 5 song “She Will Be Loved” is, despite having first heard it over a decade ago.

Levine wrote the song “Memories” in honor of his former manager and best friend that he had known since childhood, Jordan Feldstein, who, at 40 years old, passed away suddenly in December 2017 from a pulmonary embolism. The song could only have been written by someone who knows the deep grief of losing someone with whom you are very close and with whom one has shared memories that are part of one’s core being. Writing for Rolling Stone, Claire Shaffer describes the video of the song perfectly when she writes “The “Memories” clip is stark and shot in one take, showing a close-up of Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine’s face as he sings along with the song while the camera slowly pulls away from him. Levine gets noticeably emotional several times during the video, pausing and letting the track play over him before joining in again. At the end, the screen fades to black and text reading “For Jordi” appears onscreen.” (Watch the video here and read the full lyrics here). I saw Janet’s post of “Memories” after a night of doing just what Levine sings to us: having drinks in Chip’s memory. With Stella and Sam gone for the evening with their dad, those evenings are the one’s in which I can sit quietly and, as Levine sings, “toast to the ones here today, toast to the ones we lost along the way.” I drank Old Bardstown Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (which was in the order of alcohol Chip placed just days before he died and which arrived 3 or so days after his death). I drank the whiskey neat, the way Chip and I liked to drink it together, in one of the lowball glasses a special person from his past, named Margaret Curry, gave him upon his high school graduation. Then, an hour or so later with my dinner, I raised a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon up to Heaven to toast Chip (Oh, how many bottles of red wine Chip and I must have consumed together over the years…what a beautifully perfect high we got drinking wine together).

Levine’s lyric “the drinks bring back all the memories, and the memories bring back, the memories bring back you” feels like a massive understatement after last night and puts into better perspective every single time that I have raised a glass without Chip at my side. While talking to Rocky the Rockstar last night during dinner, I uttered aloud a sentence that was not too far off from Levine’s lyric “Cheers to the wish you were here but you're not.” That is a wish I will always keep wishing and that Levine will certainly keep wishing as well about his childhood and best friend.

Everlasting be the memory of Jim, Chip (not “Jim”) and Jordan Feldstein.