You Can’t Hold Me Forever

There is a lot to think about in early sobriety. Maybe that’s part of what starts it all, the over thinking, the addiction to the substance that can kill that off for a little while. Went to the Elton John concert last night in Philly. It was the perfect evening surrounded by people I love and cherish and adore inside out. He was phenomenal, of course. It’s his farewell tour, last time to perform in Philadelphia, on his way to perform his last time in any American city. It’s called his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road Tour. It was my first time attending a concert sober.

When he played Candle in the Wind, silent videos of Marilyn Monroe flashed all across the jumbotron screens behind him. There were numerous sequences where she was drinking white wine from a long flute. There was always a hand pouring her more. She was so impossibly beautiful. In her anguished expression, you could feel her falling apart. She laughed and danced and winked. She smiled, or tried to.

I don’t have a lot to say at the moment except that I woke up sober this morning, just like I went to bed sober very early this morning. And I remember every single song he performed. I remember the chills that ran up my spine and the tears that fell down my face when he sang Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me as clips of photos and videos of his amazingly creative and wild life played out, one after another after another, all around him as he sat on stage in the spotlight, playing the piano as only Sir Elton John can. This giant of a man, in the sunset of his giant life.

We watched the sun go down over the stadium. We watched the supermoon glow burning orange over the river all the way home. I think of Marilyn and the beauty that lit her up and crushed her out. Of saying goodbye to the old road. Stepping on to a new one. He closed the concert with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And then it was over. Waving, in his gorgeous fuschia floor-length robe and signature rhinestone studded square glasses, the Rocketman disappeared offstage into the darkness.