creative writing – In My Own Words

January 13, 2026

*Bob Weir at Playing in the Sand,2/17/2018, photo by Beverly Hennessy Summa*

It’s the Monday after Bob Weir’s passing, and this is the first chance I’ve had to be alone and process this loss. I was in Boston with my husband and daughter, who had an audition at a local college, and we were just about to sit down to have dinner together, when my oldest son sent a text and broke the news. The restaurant was loud and busy with a boisterous bar crowd that let us know there was a tight match between the Packers and the Bears playing out, while my husband and I checked online to confirm the loss. I teared up over the appetizer and fought back the ugly cry as we chatted through dinner, then we walked back to our hotel in the rain. I spent a few minutes looking over the various posts on Facebook from friends and other members of the Dead community who were posting their tributes and memories on the various Dead community group pages, then I looked at some of my own photos and videos taken from various shows I’d attended over the past several years.

*Bob Weir right with John Mayer left, Bill Kreutzmann on drums and image of Neal Cassady in background*, *photo by Beverly Hennessy Summa*

I’ve been a longtime listener of the Dead, and I began to deeply connect with the ethos of the music while I was in college in the 90s, but if I had to pinpoint a date when I first became aware of the band, I might use 1977. Terrapin Station was released in ’77, and my parents had the album. Though I was only about four years old at the time, I was drawn to the album cover’s folksy image of a pair of whimsical turtles playing instruments. I was already becoming familiar with the genre of music, as well as so many other sounds that defined the era. My parents’ music interests that included Neil Young, Dylan, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Doors were organically transferred to me, and only partially and in some cases merely temporarily interrupted by later artists and sounds that came out of the 80s and 90s. The fact that I never saw Jerry has long lingered in my rearview mirror. Highgate ’95 was so close, but it didn’t materialize as clogged roadways and my mother’s overly protective warnings about traffic and the risk of finding myself stranded for days derailed my hastily made plans—my mother didn’t attend Woodstock, but my father, who didn’t weigh in, had.

*Dead & Company, Citi Field, 8/20/2021 photo by Beverly Hennessy Summa*

It was 22 years after Jerry’s passing when at long last I baptized my love for the Dead’s music and attended a Dead & Company show at Citi Field on Saturday, June 24^th, 2017. As we walked into GA and the band launched into the first dreamy and undulating notes of “Jack Straw,” I felt as if we’d arrived on a new planet; our senses hugged by the wonderous and cosmic phenomenon that surrounded us. I was thrilled to be there with my husband and best friend from New Hampshire. I’d separately attended many shows for other artists with both of them over the years, but this was our first Dead show, and I knew from the entranced expressions they both wore, we were collectively feeling the same euphoric energy that seemed to vibrate up through the event flooring under or our feet while the air expanded with so many voices singing along with the band. It was magic. This particular show continues to hold special meaning for me, not only because it was my first time seeing the band, but also because it marked the moment my skeptical husband, who also happens to be a musician, got on the bus and didn’t look back. My husband, who plays guitar and had even played a few Dead tunes over the years with his various bands, never quite got it until that transitional moment. Something new had started that day, and it was the beginning of a journey we would embark on together. Our shared love for music had always been a connection, but as the parents of three young kids and the owners of a small business, our concert-going was mostly sporadic. In the years following that first show, we saw Dead & Company and Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros at least 16 times, even traveling to Mexico for the first two Playing in The Sand multi-night festivals. While we met many cool people within the community along the way, what we found in each other through the music and our shared experience at these shows brought us closer together. Some of my fondest memories from the past several years are those of my husband and me standing next to each other swaying, just a bit, me more than him, at my favorite venue, The Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, NY. This venue has long held significant importance both for the band and within the Dead community and has served as a sort of acid test (yes, that is a bad pun) for the band as they experimented with new sounds and debuted a couple of iconic songs there. My husband and I even sprang for a tile that’s installed in the walkway outside of The Cap commemorating one of the great Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros shows we saw in 2018.

*Playing in the Sand 2018*, *photo by Beverly Hennessy Summa*

In 2019 my husband and I had the privilege of taking our three kids to Playing in the Sand in Mexico. The party began at JFK, where my kids started to meet other travelers headed to the shows. By the time we reached the resort, they’d already had a slew of t-shirts, bracelets, stickers and all varieties of keepsakes passed into their waiting hands by so many generous members of the community. All of this kindness was not lost on my kids; they took notice, and while they’re older now, it remains one of the lasting memories they hold to this day. I’m grateful they had a chance to see the band play live, experience the storytelling of the songs and hear Bobby say those intermediary words at the end of set one, “we’ll be back in just a short bit.”

As the song says, “let your life proceed by its own designs.” The songs that have crystallized into the allegorical anthems they are today carry a spiritual message that has guided so many of us through our own personal journeys. These songs will continue on with a life of their own. We can take comfort in the enduring lyrics of songs like Cassidy, a song of both birth and death that Bob wrote with his friend John Perry Barlow.

*Bob Weir & the Wolfpack, The Capitol Theatre, 2/12/2023 photo by Beverly Hennessy Summa*

I’m grateful to have seen Bobby play live as many times as I did, though I do regret that it’s been a few years since our last show in 2023. In the ensuing years we had wanted to see the band again, but life circumstances got in the way, and we put it off. Our final show was June 22nd, 2023. We’d come full circle in that we were once again all together: my husband, my dear friend from NH and me at Citi Field. The last song the band played that night was Brokedown Palace. Fare thee well, Bobby. Thanks for the memories. Thank you for a real good time.

Dead & Company, Playing in the Sand 2019 “Hell in a Bucket”

Dead & Company, Playing in the Sand January 2019 “One More Saturday Night”

Dead & Company at Citi Field, 6/22/2023

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros at The Capitol Theatre, 11/10/2018 “Friend of the Devil”

Dead & Company, Playing in the Sand, 2/15/2018 “Cassidy”

Dead & Company, MSG, 11/12/2017 “Terrapin Station”

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros with Warren Haynes, The Capitol Theatre, 11/10/2018 “The Other One”

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros with Rick Mitarotonda, The Capitol Theater, 2/12/2023 “Peggy-O”

Dead & Company, Citi Field 6/24/2017 “Scarlet Begonias”

Dead & Company, Citi Field 6/23/2019 “Sampson and Delilah”

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an off-topic exploration of October, retrospection and literature

October 27, 2024

Many of us experience subtle shifts in mood with the changing seasons. For some, these mood changes can be attributed to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is a type of depression characterized by a recurrent seasonal pattern and is believed to be caused by a disruption in serotonin and melatonin levels. I hate to generalize because SAD involves a complex constellation of markers, but symptoms typically emerge in fall and early winter and improve or resolve in spring and summer. While it’s estimated that 5% of the U.S. population may suffer from this disorder, others may experience less pronounced or minimally disruptive seasonal changes in mood. For me, the autumnal shift emerges in mid to late August. It could be signaled by the back-to-school hustle that starts to ensue with the trickle of emails from my children’s schools, the frantic push to get the summer reading done, and the slog in getting my oldest organized and packed for his return to the college campus. This heightened awareness might also be related to the fact that I’ve become a casual gardener in my middle age ( a label I’m not sure I need or want)—middle-aged, not casual gardener—and is perhaps an observation I’ve taken from the plants I spent the season pruning, watering and protecting. Certainly, this all could come into play, but it never fully explained the transmutative sensation I can almost feel in my blood.

*^{Piper and Holly enjoying an October afternoon.}*

While August and September tend to feel like a long, slow deflation, October’s arrival brings a sense of renewal and rejuvenation and it’s not about the pumpkin spice or sweater weather. I’m not diametrically opposed to either, but I’d prefer to keep the gourds seasonally appropriate. I think, for those of us who have lived most of our lives in the Northeast, we’ve come to know October as the great drama artist of the season with its pageantry of color. By the time the month flounces in with its cape of gold and bronze, I’ve already made my peace with summer’s end and bid farewell to the three months’ worth of sand that has taken over my backseat—a welcomed sight in June; a source of frustration by August.

October ushers a sort of mystery and magic with its tumult and splendor. A Gen Z-er might refer to as “giving all the feels” or something to that effect, but I’d rather go deeper into what those “feels” truly arouse. If I step outside, and I’m not assailed by the whirling motor of a neighbor’s leaf blower (something that’s become a bit of a hot-button topic in my county) I can hear the satisfying crunch and crackle of leaves under foot, punctuated by the accompanying medley of acorns tumbling to the ground, where they will likely be found by the abundance of local wildlife.

^{October in the Lower Hudson Valley}

As a month that delivers so much to the senses, October tends to awaken a range of memories. Perhaps I’m waxing a little too nostalgic, but when I hear the acorns dive into the leaf beds in my yard, I’m reminded of the first apartment my husband and I shared from 2001 – 2003 on the aptly named First Street in Hoboken, NJ. We only had a few windows on the rear side of our building, and while the view offered very little, being on the second floor, we did have a small courtyard below us that belonged to a specialty foods shop, and in that courtyard was a single, small or “dwarf” apple tree. I could only see the crown of the tree from our windows, and I don’t know what variety of apples it produced, but I imagine it had been planted generations ago and perhaps had companions before the area became urbanized. But the little tree, despite being surrounded by multiple five-story walkups, managed to get enough sun and what it needed to produce its fruit. On cool nights, with the bedroom windows open, I could almost hear the ripened bundles of kinetic energy loosening from the antique tree’s branches, then parachuting through a clap of leaves, followed by the soft percussive thud upon meeting the earth. Why I remember this more than twenty years later, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s a longing for a sense of simplicity that modernity seems to have little use for. At the time, it may have served as a sort of auditory tonic to a soul that was feeling more than a little malnourished by a lack of green space, as I was only about two years into the acclimation process to city living. Still, the apple tree memory does not connote any feelings of melancholy. On the contrary, it is spun in the fiery threads of an enchantment with October that seemingly defies the boundaries of language. Of course, many a writer has fallen under its bewitching spell.

Of the writers who have explored the autumnal vibrations of October, it is Jack Kerouac who many of us think of first. Kerouac had a connection to the transitional month, and it appeared in his prose and poetry. In his seminal, autobiographical novel On the Road, Kerouac writes of his protagonist Sal Paradise who is traveling by bus on a long journey home in October: “In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after anther; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.” Kerouac passed away on October 21^st, 1969, and it’s worth mentioning that each October Kerouac’s hometown and final resting place, Lowell, MA, hosts a festival in his honor, the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Fall Festival. Though I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the festival earlier this month, I hope I’ll be able to keep the weekend clear for the 2025 events.

As we are quickly approaching the end of October, I hope, like me, you will savor the proprietary sensations that October offers: whether it be on a hike, a walk, winterizing your garden, or sitting outside to simply listen and feel the air. If you go out at night, you might even be lucky enough to hear the nocturnal flight calls from above of migrating birds following their ancient migratory routes known as the Flyway. Jim Harrison, poet, novelist, essayist, and outdoorsman, who died in 2016 while writing a poem in longhand at his desk, wrote of this natural phenomenon in his poem “Midnight Blues Planet:” “Every so often we hear the current of night music / from the gods who swim and fly as we once did.” Like the changing of seasons, it’s a reminder that we are all part of this wondrous cycle.

Keep scrolling to see a few October and autumnal-themed poems and songs I curated to keep you or get you into the mood. I also included the poem from Raymond Carver because it explores ideas of reflection and self-awareness, which are inherently connected to the transitional nature of autumn.

Locking Yourself Out,
Then Trying to Get Back In

—Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door
without thinking. And when you look back
at what you’ve done
it’s too late. If this sounds
like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had
a key were away. I tried and tried
the lower windows. Stared
inside at the sofa, plants, the table
and chairs, the stereo set-up.
My coffee cup and ashtray waited for me
on the glass-topped table, and my heart
went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,
or something like that. After all,
this wasn’t so bad.
Worse things had happened. This
was even a little funny. I found the ladder.
Took that and leaned it against the house.
Then climbed in the rain to the deck,
swung myself over the railing
and tried the door. Which was locked,
of course. But I looked in just the same
at my desk, some papers, and my chair.
This was the window on the other side
of the desk where I’d raise my eyes
and stare out when I sat at that desk.
This is not like downstairs, I thought.
This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,
from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.
I don’t even think I can talk about it.
I brought my face close to the glass
and imagined myself inside,
sitting at the desk. Looking up
from my work now and again.
Thinking about some other place
and some other time.
The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.
Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.
Even though a wave of grief passed through me.
Even though I felt violently ashamed
of the injury I’d done back then.
I bashed that beautiful window.
And stepped back in.

Midnight Blues Planet

—Jim Harrison

We’re marine organisms at the bottom of the ocean

of air. Everywhere esteemed nullities rule our days.

How ineluctably we travel from our preembryonic

state to so much dead meat on the ocean’s hard floor.

There is this song of ice in our hearts. Here we struggle

mightily to keep our breathing holes opened

from the lid of suffocation. We have misunderstood the stars.

Clocks make our lives a slow-motion frenzy. We can’t get

off the screen back into the world where we could live.

Every so often we hear the current of night music

from the gods who swim and fly as we once did.