Unused Tickets To 1998 Holly Cole Cole Performance
A Moving Discovery
Last night, as part of the seemingly perpetual preparations for our impending move, I was rummaging through a desk, separating items destined for the trash, including four year old Jewel grocery receipts, unlabeled and unrecognized numbers scrawled on the backs of envelopes, and phone books, published in 2002, still in their plastic delivery wrappers, from the pencils, the thirty or forty boxes of paper clips purchased for my business 15 – 20 years ago, and other theoretically useful office supplies which were to be salvaged for transport to the new residence.
In a back corner of a little used drawer were two unused tickets to a Holly Cole performance at Park West in Chicago. Julie1 and I had been fans of the Canadian singer for years and were excited about the prospect of seeing her perform in person.
A week before the concert, Julie’s cancer exacerbated, making it impossible for her to attend. Julie arranged for a friend to stay with her so I could drive into Chicago for the concert, but as the evening approached, I found it impossible to leave Julie’s side.
Julie’s health problems continued to wax and wane, but from this point onward she would never regain her previous levels of vitality and strength. Her course would continue to deteriorate until her death the next year.
Julie had arranged the logistics for our attendance at the performance, including obtaining the tickets, which I don’t recall seeing before last night. I certainly didn’t realize she had stashed them in her desk drawer.
Whether she simply didn’t bother disposing of the useless tickets or she intentionally kept the tickets as souvenirs of the unattended event, they have become for me an especially poignant memorial to the opportunities missed and the joys left unrealized because Julie died long before she deserved and long before we had explored, let alone exhausted, the exhilarations of being together.
Make It Go Away Or Make It Better
One of Julie’s favorite songs was Make It Go Away or Make It Better, one of the tracks from Holly Cole’s Dear Dark Heart album, released only three months before the Park West date.2 The playlist from that album, including Make It Go Away, was heavily featured in that concert series.
The video version of Make It Go Away is a different arrangement than that found on the album but the essential message is unaltered and unmistakable.
Make It Go Away – Holly Cole
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- Julie Showalter was my fiercely intelligent, wickedly sexy, and much beloved wife with whom I had a outrageously wonderful marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. She was also a prize-winning author. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ.↩
- Dear Dark Heart was published October 21, 1997↩
My hunch is that she kept them on purpose.