Another BangBang Zap Mourning Morning

All change implies loss and all loss required mourning. What does mourning require? Mourning requires remembering. Last week, I lost another friend. I'd only seen Zap a handful of times over the last 50 years but we stayed in contact on social media. Zap was a couple years younger than I so I figured I would go first if I figured at all which I didn't.

Zap had a brain stroke. He died a few weeks later. I heard about the stroke and next I heard was about his death Bang Bang.

In our time together, Zap was a great friend. We liked the same music. We liked the same teams. We "got" each other. How many people do we get in our lifetimes that "got" us. I've lost two of them in the last month.

Sometimes I don't get it.

I was still in mourning for Johnny Crown when I heard the first BANG regarding Zap and his brain. Crown was/is easier to remember than Zap because we had so many adventures together stretching all the way back to fifth grade. I had forgotten many of my adventures with Zap.

A few have come rushing back in the past week. I remembered one of the songs that Zap and I loved called "more than you'll ever know" by Blood Sweat and Tears on their first album called Child is Father of the Man. Neither the song nor the group were popular. Al Kooper started the group and left the group just before they hit it big. Everybody knows Spinning Wheel and You've Made Me So Very Happy. Only a few album nuts and Al Kooper fans remember the first album. Child was the breakthrough album, encorporating horns into the mix. A breakthrough usually leads to a main stream which leads to a river which leads to an ocean. University bands play Spinning Wheel at halftime of football games nowadays. That's as much in the ocean as you can get. Zap always preferred the breakthroughs and he could recognize them while they were happening.

Zap was closest to me when I was going through a period of loss. I wouldn't say Zap was a comfort during that time. He was a blues guy who didn't care for whining. I could bring him the blues but I better not whine. I grew up some in his company.

Even I had forgotten about  Child is Father I until heard about Zap's passing which activated one of most treasured brain functions and story telling mechanisms.

"that reminds me"

Zap and I were both "album guys". Most of my albums are gone so I had to ask Alexis to play Child is Father of the Man.

Alexis found it. She played it. listened.  I remembered even more fun I had with Zap. Fun I had forgotten.

In other words, I was mourning.

I was feeling the loss.

Zap broke through.

I was preparing for change.

Just as beer is the cause of and solution to most of the problems in the world, mourning is the solution to and the cause of change.

Even this little exercise in forgetting and remembering is part of my current mourning. It will pass in time. I'll fuggedaboudid and get on with the process of thriving while I enjoy the new morning that increasingly will cloud my memories until the next big change.

When it will be Mourning  in America once again. More buried memories will emerge along with the music always the music.