A kiss goodbye to Gord Downie

Opinion

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This article was published 17/10/2017 (2381 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Knowing something is coming doesn’t mean you’re ready for it.

The sad news broke with the daylight on Wednesday morning: Gord Downie has died. We’ve known this news was coming since spring of 2016, when we were first told Downie was dying. A form of aggressive cancer was ravaging his brilliant brain and, eventually, it would kill him.

Who is ever ready for a loss like that?

Downie was many things, in addition to being the frontman of the Tragically Hip.

“Gord said he had lived many lives,” reads the statement from Downie’s family. “As a musician, he lived ‘the life’ for over 30 years, lucky to do most of it with his high school buddies. At home, he worked just as tirelessly at being a good father, son, brother, husband and friend. No one worked harder on every part of their life than Gord. No one.”

Downie did so much in his 53 years, a lot of it we had the pleasure of experiencing. And even while he was dying, he kept on living. He faced down death in a shiny suit. He gave everything he had on every night of summer 2016’s Man Machine Poem tour, which culminated with a national broadcast and was lovingly documented in the film Long Time Running.

He continued to write and record; Secret Path, his acclaimed, Juno-winning concept album about Chanie Wenjack — the Anishinaabe boy who died in 1966 trying to make his way home after escaping from a residential school — was released last October. Introduce Yerself, a 23-song double album, will come out next week.

He did all of this while he was sick. We often think of the word ‘life’ in shades of green, a synonym for health and vitality. When we talk about “living our best life” or describe someone as being “full of life,” cancer isn’t usually part of the equation. But sickness is part of life, and you can’t have life without death. Few things make you feel more alive than the awareness that one day you won’t be.

The music, though, that doesn’t die. The Tragically Hip will continue to provide the soundtrack of our lives, and the next generation of kids will have the pleasure of discovering it. Maybe they’ll scribble Downie’s lyrics on the fronts of their notebooks, and long to have been around to see him live. The Tragically Hip will always be somebody’s favourite band.

But Downie’s legacy goes beyond the music. He inspired us to be brave, to take risks, to try. He inspired us to stand up and speak out for what we believe in. He showed us that it’s OK to be our weird selves. He showed us, time and time again, what courage and grace look like.

He was a man who made sure we never forgot a scared young boy who died alone in the woods. He was a man who saw beauty in the Coke machine’s glow. He was a man who kissed his friends on the lips.

In death, Downie inspires us still. May we all pack as much living into life as Gord Downie did. You don’t need to be a celebrated musician whose life will be eulogized in publications across the country. Good lives well lived come in many forms.

So, “use it up, use it all up. Don’t save a thing for later,” as Downie sang in Use It Up from the 2002 Hip album In Violet Light. Make memories. Build things. Go on adventures, have experiences. Worry less about the things that don’t matter. Show up. Wring as much as you can out of life and gulp down every last drop of it because, ready or not, death comes for every last one of us.

Oh, and kiss your friends on the lips.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Jen Zoratti
Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and author of the newsletter, NEXT, a weekly look towards a post-pandemic future.

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