In Honor of Alex Morris

*please listen to the song while you read the below story*

This is a song I’ve had in my iTunes for years. Probably 10-12 years. Never a song i listened to much. And then one day, about 10 years ago, I learned a friend had passed away. I was maybe 22-23, so she had to be 21, maybe. So I drive from Columbus to North Ohio and this song comes on during the drive. And I couldn’t turn it off. I listened to the song on repeat for most of the 3 hour drive to her funeral.

Her name was Alex Morris. We were more acquaintances than friends in college, but we’re always cool. But when she passed, I felt this intense urge to be where she was. So I drove. It’s weird. I’ve always hated funerals. I was 6 when my grandma passed and I refused, adamantly, going to her funeral. And I didn’t go. But for Alex, this was the first funeral I voluntarily went to. And there was something about this song, “The Good Fight,” by Teenager, that was emotionally gripping to me. The first half of the song is about regret, which wasn’t appropriate for me, at the time, but the second half of the song repeats, over and over, “just fighting, just fight the good fight”. And that’s what Alex did. All the time. She had cancer when she was a child, and took a lot of her mobility. But she was always positive. Always fucking positive. And she was good for a while, but it came back in her early twenties, took her leg, became metastatic, and spread to her lungs. It was a fairly rapid thing.

I remember listening to this song on the drive and crying the whole way. I think it was because I was contrasting my fast and reckless life, with no serious physical consequences, to the experiences she went through, and I think that’s when i first really realized that all this shit can’t end instantaneously. Regardless of what you personally do. Everything felt real and unavoidable during those three hours.

When I get there, the wake was before the funeral. And I remember sitting in the parking lot, unable to get out of the car. I think it was about 30 minutes before I went inside. So I go in, and I wait in line to pay my respects to Alex. I finally get there, and I look at her laying in the casket, no more than 22 years old, and I break down, sobbing. I think to this day, this is the most I’ve cried, the most emotionally vulnerable and uncontrolled I’ve ever been. I walk over to her mother and all I can do is cry and apologize as if I was somehow responsible, or if somehow my future happiness depends on her mother’s forgiveness. Grief and sadness is weird like that.

We all get in our cars with the flags on our hoods and do the funeral drive all the way to the cemetery. Instead of burying Alex, I think they put her casket in one of the buildings with the plaque that you can walk inside to, though I could be wrong. I don’t really remember. But every time I hear this song, I remember how I felt during that drive. I don’t cry anymore when the song comes on, and that makes me sad because I wonder if I’ve hardened, if I’ve become more emotionally unavailable, or if I’ve forgotten Alex. But today, I write this on a flight to my celebrate my birthday, and when this song came on on shuffle, I had to play it on repeat and write out how I felt.

Alex’s birthday is about a week after mine, so I always think about her around this time. Happy Birthday, Alex. I love you and I miss you. 

Here's the story I wrote shortly after her death, and another around 3 years after her passing.

Song of the Day: D-Why - "Own Eyes" ft. Local Natives

The beautiful thing about music is that it can get your through anything. It personifies whatever emotions you're feeling at a given time, whether the song is actually aligns with those emotions or not. Iggy Azalea's "Work" and MC Righteous "Hold It Down" have helped me, tremendously, through the last two months of grad school because it reminds me that after the pain, after all the struggle and stress, after all the questioning of your own abilities, desire, and worthiness, after all the self-doubt, comes something concrete and amazing.
This song, "Own Eyes", a remaking/remix/sample of Local Natives' "Wide Eyes" by West Virginia/L.A./NY rapper D-Why, was one of two songs I listened to on repeat as I drove the 2.5 hours from Columbus, Ohio to Grafton, Ohio on March 30th, 2012 to attend the funeral of a friend who died of cancer at the rip ol' age of 22. Twenty fucking two. The song isn't about death, per se, but it's about carrying the burden of a tremendous loss. For D-Why, it's about the dissolution of a relationship, the self-realizations that come along with it, and the fortitude to move forward.

 I'm tired of saying hellos, good-byes, goodnights, and 'what's your names?'/ 'where'd you go?', 'why are you crying?', 'why are you lying?' and 'where are you staying?'/ When the love is gone, disappoint and desire is all that remains/and you can pile those tears on top of my young and well dressed remains

But for me, during that drive to and from the funeral, the song was all about the sharp pain I felt from my friend's all to soon passing. It signified all the things we all take for granted, everyday. Not the money or the things we work so hard to use that money for. No. I'm talking about the relationships we have with the people we love, the relationships we have with the people we want to love, the opportunities we allow to outrun us, and the hours, days and years spent doing things that don't make us happy. We take for granted the concept of happiness, often times focusing on short-term gratification in a way that gets us nowhere because we don't allow ourselves to live the life we truly want, be the person we know is possible, or take the chances of vulnerability and embarrassment by laying everything on the line for the people we want to be with. Is it the "I'll do it tomorrow" mentality, or are we just fucking cowards? Any way you look at it, we wait. And for what? What the fuck are we waiting for? There's no guarantee we'll even be here tomorrow. Maybe more importantly, there's no guarantee they'll be here tomorrow.

This is what I learned the hardway, and that is what the song means for me. The beauty of music is that it means whatever you want to it mean, however you want to feel at any given time and in any given place.

I was so shook at the funeral that I couldn't even look in the direction of the casket. I've never cried so much or so hard in my life. My friend and I weren't particularly close, but she embodied everything that I ever wanted to be. She was my idol, in that way. She had cancer as a child and went into remission. The cancer came back at 15, and she went into remission again, only to have it come back a third time at 21 and take her leg before ultimately taking her life 9 months later. And through it all? She carried a calm strength I've never seen before or since. She was more optimistic than a human being should be able to be. She never stopped fighting the good fight.
Alexandra Lee Morris died three year ago, last month. March 26th, 2012, to be exact. I fucking love you. You've taught me so much, and I'm sorry I haven't been living my life the way I should. I'm working on that. Here's the dedication I wrote to her shortly after her death.