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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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