Thoughts on Legacy
Alternatively Titled: Will hearing Taylor Swift perform Marjorie live make me cry?
Anyone who knows me knows that I have been deep in the rabbit hole of Taylor Swift obsession since last October. I know, me and the rest of the world. Over the past 14ish years, I have gone through phases of liking, loving, and not caring too much for Taylor Swift. Fearless and Speak Now were very popular when I was in middle school, and I had almost every song from each album downloaded to my little purple mp3 player. These were the songs that I listened to when I first started writing stories and when I first got my little 13- to 16-year-old heart broken. I did not love Red, 1989, Reputation, or Lover on first listen, but I blame that on how they were released. Getting We Are Never Ever Ever Back Together as a single for Red and writing off the album only to later find All Too Well was a core experience. Years later, hearing ME as the radio single for Lover and not finding The Archer (one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs ever) until over a year later was a repeat of the whole incident.
Folklore and Evermore, on the other hand, are albums that I fell in love with on first listen. These are PERFECT albums for introspective girlies who like melancholy music, and I listened to them SO MUCH during the early pandemic days of 2020 and 2021. The summer that I was getting transcranial magnetic stimulation done, I actually listened to Folklore every day on my drives to and from treatment, so I may have pavloved myself into loving it forever. Anyways, jumping forward, I was very excited when Taylor Swift released Midnights last October, and although it is a step away from the sad folksy ballads of Folklore and Evermore and a step back into the world of pop, I still loved it on first listen. I was even more excited in November when Taylor Swift announced that she would be touring again for the first time since 2018.
I, much like everyone, everyone’s mother, and everyone’s dog, toiled in the trenches of Ticketmaster on November 15. I sat with my personal computer propped up in the corner of my desk at work with the message “there are 2,000 people ahead of you in the queue” taunting me from the screen all day, and I was one of the unlucky and unfavored who did not score tickets. Enter my friend Amna, who swooped in like an angel of the Lord a month or so later and offered up an extra ticket to me. I am so lucky and excited to be seeing Taylor Swift in Pittsburgh on June 17.
Ever since Taylor began touring back in March, I have fervently watched videos of her performances on TikTok in anticipation of the show I will attend. I am glad that her setlist includes many songs from Folklore and Evermore, but I have mixed feelings about hearing her song Marjorie live. For those who don’t know, Marjorie is a song Taylor wrote about her deceased grandmother. It is a beautiful song, and it just so happened to be released in December 2020, three months before I lost my grandma to Parkinson’s in March 2021.
A day or two ago, I saw a video of Taylor tearing up while performing Marjorie live when those in the stadium began to wave flashlights (flashlights on their phones, that is) in the air. I wonder if she felt her grandma there with her in that stadium, in that sea of lights. I bet she did. I wonder if I will cry when she performs Marjorie at Pittsburgh in June. (I bet I will.)
For anyone who is not a Taylor Swift person, I am including some of the lyrics to Marjorie (the bridge and the final chorus) below:
The autumn chill that wakes me up
You loved the amber skies so much
Long limbs and frozen swims
You'd always go past where our feet could touch
And I complained the whole way there
The car ride back and up the stairs
I should've asked you questions
I should've asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should've kept every grocery store receipt
'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me
What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, you're alive in my head
What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, so alive
And if I didn't know better
I'd think you were singing to me now
If I didn't know better
I'd think you were still around
I know better
But I still feel you all around
I know better
But you're still around
If you say that doesn’t give you chills, I would think that you have to be lying. I listened to that song so much in March 2021 while I was working through complicated grief at the loss of my Grandma Ellen. Her quality of life diminished so much in the last two years of her life that in some ways her passing was a blessing. She and I also had a complicated relationship. She made it to her death bed telling me that I had made the wrong choices about my life and bemoaning the fact that I was not going to medical school. Despite all of that, I miss her deeply. I miss her every time I go to Robinson Mall in Pittsburgh, where we used to go shopping together. I missed her when I got engaged and couldn’t show her my ring (she loved jewelry and had entirely too much of it). I miss her when I travel and cannot tell her about my trips (she loved to travel too and had been to all 50 states and several different countries at the time of her death). Most of all, I miss her on holidays. I miss her insistence that we sit in the seats she had picked for us at dinner and the small smile she would get when she watched her grandchildren open presents she had picked out. I miss the time she laughed to the point of crying because my grandpa had wrapped up empty boxes for her with a note inside that said that they would be filled “three times over” when the JC Penny after-holiday sales rolled around. I miss a time that is long gone, when my siblings and I would spend the night at her house, rent movies from Blockbuster, and play “restaurant” in her kitchen.
And yet, I have come to learn that a person’s legacy can long outlast them. I never got to meet my fiancé’s father, the man who would have been my father-in-law, because he passed away when my fiancé was 15, but I feel his presence through his absence. He is there when Ian and I talk about Star Wars or ride bikes or listen to 80s and 90s grunge-y bands that his dad liked. He is there in the fingerprints he left on Ian, all of the million little ways that he shaped the man that my fiancé has become. I often wonder how many other people I have come to know through their absence. My living grandma has told me how much she looked up to her own grandma; I wonder how much of this woman that I love and hope to be like was shaped by someone I have never met.
With the subject of my other grandma at hand, it is worth noting that the living can leave a legacy with us just as much as the dead. There are things that I do that are heavily shaped by my Grandma Ellen. I love to travel, I often like to have things my way, and I know when it is important to dig in my heels and make a stink. (One time, as a matter of fact, when I had to go toe-to-toe with my grad school program’s director about an issue related to inclusion, I wore red, my grandma’s token nail polish color, and several pieces of her jewelry to the meeting in an attempt to channel her fiery spirit). There are other things that I do that are heavily shaped by my Grandma Sue, who is still alive. Grandma Sue loves books, and reading the same books as her to have our own little book club is one of my favorite things. She has always nurtured my love of writing and is a big supporter of whatever direction, job, program, etc. my life carries me towards. Grandma Sue loves the color blue, which is my favorite color as well. She loves to listen and has a particular talent for making whoever she talks to feel like they are the only person in the world at that instant, which is a habit I have always tried to imitate.
Then there is also so much to be said for the impact of friends and chosen family. Family is not always tied to those with whom you share blood. For some people, family is not blood at all. I think about how I often pick up certain words or phrases that my friends use when I have spent a good deal of time with them. I think about how keeping in contact with friends and calling them on the phone regularly is just as important to me as calling my family. I think about the favorite movies, songs, and places that I have absorbed from friends who I don’t talk to anymore but will always care for.
All of this is to say that what we do matters. The way we speak, live, and engage with others can have a real impact and often outlast us. Today, I am asking myself these two questions and invite you, my ten loyal readers, to ask them of yourself as well: Who has impacted me? How do I wish to impact others?
My Grandma Ellen, looking fashionable as ever in red and standing at the continental divide:
❤️
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