You think you have time...

I’ve been separated for three and a half years. Man, it seems like so much longer than that! I’ve gone through so much in that time, so much uncertainty, fear, doubt, anxiety, etc. I was couch surfing, lived in a homeless shelter for four months, and then renting rooms, until finally last year I was able to rent an apartment with my roommate, Terri.

I didn’t know Terri that well back then, she was more of an acquaintance. Our common friend, Linda, thought it would be ideal for us to share an apartment. Terri was also renting a room and searching for a new place. The rent was doable for us and the place wasn’t too bad, even though it was an old building and the neighborhood was just slightly questionable. We had no sofas, no dining room set, and no kitchen appliances. I was very excited to be able to decorate the way we wanted to and buy things little by little. Terri didn’t care about any of it, she let me decide what to get. As long as she had her cable with her soaps and her crime shows she was content. She would come out to smoke a cigarette and that was the only time we would talk about our kids, our ex-husbands and our jobs.  Most of the time, she just kept to herself.

But when she did talk to me, to be honest, I didn’t believe half of what she said. She was married to a military man, so maybe she really did live in Japan. But did she really live in Hawaii and meet Tom Selleck? Did she actually go to Sammy Hagar concerts and got to hang out with him backstage more than once? This Terri? The one person that had a hard time saying “yes” to any social opportunities with friends? I couldn’t picture her being half as adventurous as she claimed she used to be. The most exciting thing that would happen to her was when she got to shout “Bingo!” on Sundays, which wasn’t very often.

I knew she had her demons to wrestle with, as we all do. Depression, addiction, emotional childhood trauma… She tried to hide the struggle, but I could feel it. It was like darkness that emanated from her bedroom, a thick cloud of loneliness that even affected me when she was in there watching TV. There was nothing anyone around her could do. But we tried. She didn’t eat well, and her health was not great. She had two blood clots, which really scared me more than it did her.

There were weeks where I didn’t see her for a couple of days or more and I would knock at her door with any excuse to make sure I could at least hear her voice and know that she was OK. One night, I knocked and she didn’t answer me back. I thought that maybe she was asleep. So I tried to call her again in the morning and still, no response. I was afraid to open the door. So I called Linda to come in and check on her. My fears were realized. The coroner said she had been dead for at least 36 hours. We were all shocked, but in a way, I wasn’t. I had a feeling that would happen, but I didn’t want to be the one to find her. I couldn’t even look at her body when they took it out. I didn’t want to remember her like that.

It was a really difficult situation, something I’ve never experienced before. Making that 911 call, telling the police and the coroner about her, trying so hard not to be nervous and give the correct information, hearing Linda calling Terri’s kids, going to work just to get out of that apartment and then having to go back… I hated being there alone that night. I didn’t want to go by her room knowing that’s where she died, but I had to in order to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t wait to move out, even if it was back to renting a room, again.

So I tell Rob and he’s shocked, of course. He felt really bad for me. Everyone he told just couldn’t believe it. A couple of days later he tells me that he has a song. I listened and it was perfectly sad. I wrote the lyrics and laid a scratch track down. “Nameless” was born. Rob shares the origin of the song: 

"The road to 'Nameless' started a long time ago in Alaska or Pennsylvania with an E minor/augmented 5th guitar riff that had the sadness of a minor key crossed with the tension of the sharp (5^th) harmony note. When I got my new acoustic guitar, I played it in E but moved it up to A to test the range of my new hollow ax. This became the intro. For the verse section, I reclaimed the wistful sound of the original piece by running both the rhythm and harmony lead as an E minor progression but with harmonic minor passing tones to maintain the tension of the piece. I felt that a passionate lead was needed in the middle, like a silent scream that you can suddenly hear. I channeled my inner Zakk Wylde to bring wailing pinch harmonics and abrupt flurries of string tapping to that section within the exotic E harmonic minor framework. I ended up leaving the rhythm guitar out to make the lead section pop even more with the sharp passing tones on the bass. The transition to the heavy part was eased by a high harmony lead and the acoustic rhythm mixed in to tie the feeling to the pure acoustic part. The structure for this song feels very unconventional. It falls back to the acoustic suddenly and the end seems to come sooner than expected. But you are left with the fleeting beauty of the final acoustic part as the lead diverges into a freer form. Every layer was individually constructed to add to the whole sound. It becomes the perfect vehicle for Veronica to exhibit a great amount of feeling that works with the bass and guitar layers to make the song complete."


So while at the memorial service, friends and family shared stories about Terri. One of her friends talked about the time they met Tom Selleck in Hawaii, and someone else talked about Sammy Hagar and the times she hung out with him.  I was stunned!! With tears in my eyes, I laughed as we remembered her life. As I’m writing this, I got a text from Linda asking me if we’re going to buy a pint of vodka and let out balloons for Terri’s birthday on May 9^th. I laugh and replied, “Terri would like that.” Cheers!