About Loss, With Poet/Singer-Songwriter Gary Browe

 Can you take heartache and put it to verse? Our guest Gary Browe has written a poetry book on loss of all kinds and shared some of them in song: https://bit.ly/4lcd9Cx

The path to healing is a bumpy ride. The stages of grief are often filled with potholes, wrong turns, and much uncertainty. Losing someone you love hurts. You feel vulnerable and alone and need something to help you feel less alone. 

Our guest this week is Gary Browe, author of the book About Loss. The poems in About Loss are written in free verse. They are simple and direct, yet emotional and beautiful. Love is part of loss, and this book has many love poems as well as poems of heartache.

Gary performed an acoustic guitar version of his poems, Butterflies (Town Grill in the book) and Trans-Am. 

In this Episode:

• 04:02 - Road Trip to Massachusetts, Inventions and Tollhouse Cookies
• 06:54 - Interview with Gary Browe - About Loss
• 19:07 - Gary Browe performs Butterflies (Town Grill)
• 23:46 - Gary Browe performs Trans-Am
• 27:24 - Do Elephants Mourn? from Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult
• 30:46 - Outro

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 4:02 Road Trip to Massachusetts, Inventions and Tollhouse Cookies
• 6:54 Interview with Gary Browe – About Loss
• 19:07 Gary Browe performs Butterflies (Town Grill)
• 23:46 Gary Browe performs Trans-Am
• 27:24 Do Elephants Mourn? from Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult
• 30:46 Outro

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, a podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every person viewpoint to our podcast.

We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions before a crisis hits. Also, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording.

Welcome to this week's show. We're so glad to have you join Charlie and me for the next hour as we talk about loss. This podcast is a combination of education and entertainment, otherwise known as edutainment, delivered in three halves.

Our main topic's the second half, so you can fast-forward to that chat-free zone if you'd like. In the first half, Charlie has our recipe of the week. In the second half, I have an interview with author Gary Breaux.

We're going to talk about his book about loss, and he's going to share some of his music with us. And in the third half, Charlie has a reading from Jodi Picoult's book, Leaving Time. So, Charlie, how are you? Well, I can't complain, but I still do.

I'm trying to think anything exciting happening. You know, I notice there are fewer tourists in the big city, especially around Times Square. Not that I miss them.

It's just nice. It's easier to get around. Is it because of the heat or something else? I think it's a combination of the heat and something else.

There are... Tourism, oh, jeez, tourism became the number one industry in New York, you know, before COVID, and it has pretty much rebounded. There are so many people here. And it's one thing, I don't know why people just love to go to Times Square.

It's just, you know, a bunch of big, you know, nondescript skyscrapers, but I guess it just still has that allure of what it had been in the past. You know, if it's not skyscrapers, and it's just these huge jumbotron things selling... Yeah, but it's not real Times Square. You know, it's like tourist Times Square.

Exactly, and that's exactly my point. And people don't know that. The space between Times Square and over to Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, I mean, it's a building.

It's a spectacular building, wonderful Art Deco, but it's not like you can go in and just, you know, wander around aimlessly. It is so packed with people. And Marianne, I don't... It doesn't seem to be an experience.

It just simply seems a way to take a picture, film a video. And I mean, there doesn't seem to be any connection. It's not an experience.

It's just something you can, I don't know, put on social media or whatever. And that's my take of the week. Thank you very much for listening.

As if we haven't heard it before. Yes, and you're going to hear it again. Yes.

So leaving Manhattan, everyone dies travels to Massachusetts where ingenuity and technology advances originate. Massachusetts also proudly posts of being home to creative ideas and inventions such as disposable safety razors. Boston became the world headquarters of the Gillette company named after King Camp Gillette, who envisaged the idea of a disposable razor in 1895.

Tupperware. Errol Tupper invented Tupperware and began selling plastic containers at home parties in 1951. The iron lung.

Harvard developed an artificial respirator in 1927 to allow sick patients to breathe more easily while other courses of medical action were being experimented with. The first subway was built in Massachusetts. Boston's subway system was constructed in 1897 and was the first ever created in America and now runs 78 miles long and has over 130 stations located in the metro area.

One of the yummiest facts about Massachusetts has got to be the creation of the ever so scrumptious chocolate chip cookie. Ruth Graves Wakefield ran the Toll House Inn with her husband in Whitman, Massachusetts. The Inn had originally been used as a toll house as early as 1709.

While experimenting with her recipe for a thin butterscotch pecan cookie, she decided to add chocolate to the recipe. She had run out of baking chocolate so she substituted the baking chocolate with chocolate pieces, expecting them to melt and create plain chocolate cookies. As opposed to melting and disseminating across the cookie, the bits maintain their chunky form as they baked and the chocolate chip cookie was born.

The original Toll House cookies recipe is a must-try. With rich chocolate chips, a chewy texture, and the iconic flavor you've come to love, these cookies are perfect for your next funeral lunch. Bon Appetit.

Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe for original Toll House cookies and the original resources for this program. Everyone Dies is offered at no cost but is not free to produce. Can we count on you to contribute? Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our nonprofit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone.

You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. Marianne, in our next section, Everyone Dies is pleased to have Gary Breaux as our guest today. Gary was born in Detroit, Michigan and grew up in the tiny pocket of southwest Detroit called the Verner Springs Wells District.

He is a poet, singer, and songwriter and his book titled About Loss was released this May. Please welcome Gary Breaux. So I'm talking today with Gary Breaux who is a singer-songwriter from southeast Michigan.

Yes. And actually our good friend Mike introduced us and he has written a book called About Loss and we'll put the in the show notes how you can find the book and how you can find his music. So welcome to Everyone Dies, Gary.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I've read your book, I've listened to your music, and the first part of the book is called The Heartbreak of a Breakup.

And the second section is The Loss of a Loved One. And I noticed in, and we're gonna, I primarily want to ask you about the second half. Okay.

And as I read that part, the poems are dedicated to different people in your life. And so were each of these poems written in immediate response to the loved one's death, or did they come afterwards? What was your motivation for writing them? Some of them were quite early. The one in there called Town Grill was written probably within, you know, a month or so afterwards.

But it was a poem and then I later, you know, at some point put it to music. So is that primarily how your stuff works? You write a poem and then it becomes a song? Or is it sometimes the other way around? Yes, the other way around. I mean, everybody gets this question.

It's either, you know, it's either, or, and all of the above. I work that way. Also, I work by assignment.

You know, I go to songwriting retreats. So there's one up in Michigan, upper Michigan, called Lamb's Retreat that I go most every year, and other ones. And that's how things get written as part of assignments.

So I seem to work that way, too. Oh, that's interesting. So whose death? Because it's a wide variety of people's deaths that you're talking about in the books.

So did you have any person's death that you found it hardest to write about? Yeah, probably my mom. You know, my mom was something, you know, she was very close to me, you know, throughout my life. And, you know, we were, you know, really close, and we had a good relationship.

Yeah, so it was hard. Her death was very difficult, and I was there in the room when she passed. So it was, you know, I didn't expect her to die when she did, but she did.

Oh, really? So it took you by surprise? Well, she was in a nursing home for a stroke. She had had a stroke, and she was doing fairly well. And that, you know, I would go visit her every day, and in the evening, time after work.

And just one day, she had some look in her eye, and, you know, she, you know, I held her hand for quite a while, and just all of a sudden, she had, you know, she took a deep breath and passed. It was just that way. She was waiting for you to get off work and come and see her? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, you know, she had had a bath that day, so that, you know, I mean, that they had all, you know, would bathe her in the nursing home, because she couldn't do anything at that point. She was pretty much just laying there. That's so hard, isn't it? Oh, yeah, it was tremendously difficult.

Oh, go ahead. No, I just, you know, I, you know, I would always check up with, on her every night, and one night, I didn't hear from her, and, and, you know, walked over, I drove over, and, you know, found her, and then, you know, rushed her to the But she lasted about nine months, so after that, yeah. Oh, time, isn't it? Yep.

One of your poems that I absolutely loved was Hudson's Detroit, and it brought back for me my childhood, taking the bus down 4th Street to go to downtown Detroit with my mom, and she liked to get all dressed up, you know, Sundays, and go into downtown, and we would go to Hudson's shopping, and go to the Hudson's cafeteria for lunch, and it was like the best ham and cheese sandwich in the universe, Hudson's made. Yeah, for real. And in the poem, you talk about going to Woolworth's for lunch.

What was, what was your favorite food to get there? Hamburgers, probably, you know, I was just a kid, but, you know, that was kind of the drill, you know, we would go down, we would take the Lafayette Green bus, because that was closer to our house, and we would, you know, walk down, get on the bus, go downtown, and then we would eat there or somewhere else down there, and then we would go to Hudson's, and she always liked to go to the basement, and I liked to go to the mezzanine, where the coin shop was, so I put that in the poem. Such a beautiful story. I was so sad when they left.

Yeah, it kind of came about right after her, you know, right after her death, and, you know, of course, the tragedy of, you know, going through and trying to clean out the house. And, you know, I'm sitting in her, you know, in her kitchen, and she has a little light, you know, in her kitchen, and that was, so I'm sitting there all in the dark except for that light, and that's where, you know, broke part of that poem anyway. Is that something you can read to us? Oh, sure, sure.

Then off to the bargain thrift store in the basement. Mom's favorite. My favorite place in Hudson's was the mezzanine.

That was where the coin shop was. Once I wandered off to look at the coins, and when I returned to the place where she was standing, she was gone. Gone.

I remember the panic, the terror. Mom! Mom! I screamed. Have you seen my mother? Now I'm old.

And I'm growing older. I feel that way again. The panic reimagined and more real than ever.

This time she can't find me. This time I can't find her. My stomach feels like it did then, riding the Hudson's elevator up to the twelfth floor with its cording gates closing in and the operator deliberately pulling the brass lever hard to go up faster.

Only this time there is no Santa's workshop on the twelfth floor. No reward for my bravery. No magic elves to make it better.

This time I'm all alone, sitting alone at my mother's kitchen table, her bedroom lamp shining through the slender dark hallway, and me remembering how happy I was that day, sharing a chocolate chip cookie on our bus ride back home. Those are great memories, aren't they? Yeah, they're great memories. Yeah, I have great memories of her, too.

And I like to write, because I've written lots of songs and stuff, and poems that aren't published, too. So do you find yourself still writing about her death, or writing about her? No, but she creeps into my music sometimes, yeah. So, do you feel like you have more things to say about the different people's deaths, or is it part of how you grieve? How does the poetry writing work for you? Well, the poetry has been part of my life ever since I was a teenager.

And I would write first assignments for school is probably where it started, and some teachers saying, oh, that's really good. And so I just kept a journal, and I wrote, I mean, really throughout my life. I've written a lot of things over the years, and some have become poems, and some have become songs later on.

But it's just something I do to kind of get through the day sometimes, that's how I journal. And sometimes the journaling is writing a paragraph or something, but sometimes it just comes out as poetry. Was that part of your purpose in doing this book, was either sharing your grief or sharing your process? What was your goal for this book? This book came about because of an illness.

I was in the hospital last year for 12 days. I had gone to the emergency room with stomach pain and ended up in the emergency room in emergency surgery. So I had some time to think, and I had a book that I had written about going through a breakup, and that book's out of print.

And I have a few copies left, but not very many. And so I decided that I couldn't do anything else when I got home from the hospital, that I was going to sit down and do it. But what happened is the book kind of took over my life.

And so that was my thing that summer, all that summer, last summer. I said, oh, I'll do this, and I thought it would take me a couple of weeks, well it ended up taking me six months. And then lots of revisions and going back and forth and adding poems and taking them out.

So the first part is more about a breakup, but I think that it would also apply to somebody who's lost a spouse. There's a lot of poems in there that deal with that too. Now, the one that you wrote for your dad, it's called Town Grill.

And it's a poem, but it's also a song. You said that you would sing that for us? Oh, sure, I can do that. I'm in my guitar.

So the song in the book is called Town Grill, and I renamed it Butterflies, because it's about butterflies going to heaven, and that's kind of how people go. I sit like a toad on a mushroom Across from the wall of kitchen things Outside the windswept leaves harboring the doorway For the witch and the world to put them in a spell and send them off dancing Like butterflies from heaven Did you know my father asked the waitress He used to come here sometimes, I know He had blonde hair, they called him Whitey Oh, Charlie, she said, I've heard it's been sick I heard a lot about you When you see him, tell him I'm a settler I don't know how to tell you They called me on the phone Didn't talk to him that night, I know And the sky was gray I felt so alone Needed someone to hold my hand She took my cup and she filled it The hurt will pass, you see, in time I saw your father about a month ago In the bar next door I heard him sing his favorite song Show me the way to go Oh, baby, the Lord will help you carry on I don't know how to tell you They called me on the phone Didn't talk to him that night, I know And the sky was gray I felt so alone Needed someone to hold my hand I sit like a toad on a mushroom Cradling coffee like a lost friend The autumn weeds lay in the doorway For the witch and world To put them in a spell and send them off dancing Like butterflies from heaven Heaven Ah, thank you. Wonderful.

Thanks. Here's a poem in your book called Trans Am. And it says it's for Don.

Who's Don? Don was a high school friend that had passed away. He was 36 when he passed. He had a tragic death.

Him and I were very, very close. He had moved away, but we kept in touch. And if he was up in Michigan, he'd stop and see me.

And he lived down in Oklahoma. And one night he was working for GM and something with the rigging, he was a rigger. And something happened and he was crushed.

And that's what the poem is about. Well, it's not about that, but it's about us. About our friendship.

When I read it, it's like, oh, I know where the Raisin River is. Yeah, down in Monroe, right? Yeah, my sister lived in Monroe. Well, would you like to close out our interview with that song? Here's Trans Am.

We're waiting on the summer wind to take us home again. On the banks of the Raisin River, we talked of our lives and cruised down 75 in that old Trans Am. You always needed to be loved.

You held on to that special one. On the night that her house caught fire, you were right by her side. Oh, how you cried when she said goodbye.

Funny how the years have gone by. It just don't seem real, no, no. You went away to forget about her.

And you prayed in an empty church. We went off in our separate lives. Never following our dreams.

I wonder what you see on that final ride. Funny how the years have gone by. It just don't seem real, no, no.

You used to wait on that summer wind to take you home again. I still fish on the Raisin River and talk of our lives and cruise down 75 in that old Trans Am. In that old Trans Am.

Well, Gary, it's been great to talk to you and I appreciate your poetry and your music. And for our listeners, look in the show notes for all of Gary's information. But the book is About Loss by Gary Burrow.

So thank you, Gary. Thank you. OK, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it. For our third half, a reading from Jodi Pico's book, Leaving Time. Anyone who has ever seen elephants come across the bones of another individual would recognize the calling card of grief, the intense silence, the droop of the trunk and ears, the hesitant caresses, the sadness that seems to wrap the herd like a shroud when they encounter the remains of one of their own.

But there's some question as to whether elephants distinguish between the bones of elephants they knew well and those of elephants they did not. Some of the research that has been coming out from my colleagues at Mboseli up in Kenya, where they have more than 20,000 elephants that are recognized individually has been intriguing. Taking one herd at a time, the researchers revealed several key items, a small bit of ivory, an elephant skull, a block of wood.

They did this experiment as one would have in a lab, carefully maintaining the presentation of the objects and recording the responses of the elephants to see how long they lingered at each item. Without a doubt, the tiny piece of ivory was the most intriguing to the elephants, followed by the skull and then the wood. They stroked the ivory, picked it up, carried it, rolled it beneath their hind feet.

Then the researchers presented the families with the skull of an elephant, the skull of a rhino and the skull of a water buffalo. In this series of objects, the elephant skull was the item that interested the herd the most. Finally, the researchers focused on three herds that had, in the past few years, suffered the death of their leader.

The families were presented with the skulls of those three matriarchs. You'd think that the elephants would have been most interested in the skull that belonged to the matriarch who had led their own herd. After all, the other parts of the controlled experiment clearly showed that the elephants were capable of showing preference instead of randomly examining the items out of general curiosity.

You'd think that, given the examples I'd personally witnessed in Botswana of elephants who seemed deeply moved by the death of one of their own and capable of remembering that death years later, they would have paid tribute to their own leader. But that's not what happened. Instead, the Amboseli elephants were equally attracted to the three skulls.

They may have known and lived with and even deeply mourned an individual elephant, but that behavior was not reflected in these results. Although the study proves that elephants are fascinated by the bones of other elephants, some might say it also proves that an elephant experiencing grief for an individual must be a fiction. Some might say if the elephants did not distinguish between the skulls, the fact that one of those skulls was their own mother wasn't important.

But maybe it means that all mothers are. And that's it for this week's episode of Everyone Dies. Thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Navarette and from Jodi Pico. If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone? And I'm Marianne Masso, and we'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift.

This podcast does not provide medical advice. All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health.

Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Everyone Dies does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, practitioners, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in this podcast.

Reliance on any information provided in this podcast by persons appearing on this podcast at the invitation of Everyone Dies or by other members is solely at your own risk.