April, 8 2020
They were playing more John Prine on the radio this morning than they usually do. Suddenly it struck me. They only play so many of an artist’s songs on the day he dies. John Prine is gone. Coronavirus got him and I was crushed.
His music has a special place in my life. In Spite of Ourselves was one of our wedding songs. The lyrics told of a quirky couple that, in spite of themselves, ended up sitting on a rainbow. In the lyrics, he loves her even though she swears like a sailor when she shaves her legs. And she loves him even though he drinks his beer like it’s oxygen.
The song fit us well. Together again after a twenty-three-year separation. Trying to find some happiness at that late date. Both of us in our late 50’s, back together after I’d left to have a child and make a life. Me, a widow. He, a confirmed bachelor.
My daughter, MaiLynn, had just graduated from college and was living with us until she could find a job. She put together the playlist for the party that followed the wedding. She understood my love for John Prine, I think, more than she understood my love for Dave.
The year that followed changed our lives. I got sick and ended up in the hospital for six months. The care of the house and sitting vigil over my sometimes-questionable recovery broke the already prickly relationship between my daughter and my new husband.
Once I was home, and it was clear that I would recover, MaiLynn made plans to go to Vietnam with her friends and to look for her father’s family.
She took me to a Prine concert a few days before she left. Still weak and trailing my oxygen apparatus, I sat and watched and marveled at how he could make songs out of the most common kinds of suffering. He spoke to my life and the life of all of us who have to face death and loneliness but who want to do it with a sense of humor.
It’s been 10 years since that date. MaiLynn visits every year or so and we talk on the phone, but she has never returned to live in the United States. She makes her home in New Zealand. A lovely place, but so far away.
I cried this morning; the first time since the stay-at-home order changed all of our lives again. I miss my old life; I miss my daughter and I miss Jon Prine.
Suzanne Stormon Writes 
One reply on “John Prine, the Coronavirus and Me”
Big cyber hugs Suzanne. Miss you. I loved this blog. At this point in my life, I often ask myself, what if this is the last time we/I… In long long run, there is not much we could change. The missing is love. We still love. And miss.