Rick Elias...

It has been 21 days.

     Three weeks exactly to the day. Three weeks, and this is the first time I’ve considered writing about it. I’ve talked about it a bit. I’ve lamented it. But it’s remained buried beneath a hardened carapace of denial, grief, and sorrow. This empty, vacuous hole. This invisible, heavy weight.

My friend Rick is gone.

     Three weeks ago, today -April 2, 2019— my friend Rick Elias opened his eyes to see Jesus at last. The journey was hard, and wearisome, and difficult. He fought bravely. He fought the monster of glioblastoma that hid itself in his brain…and he fought the monsters who keep it company; fear, doubt, sadness, regret, sorrow…

     I have wondered why this has not broken me more than it has. I wondered if it’s because, from the moment he called me last August, to tell me of the diagnosis and the terrible prognosis, I knew this was going to be the outcome. So far, the score is Glioblastoma 1- humanity 0 for all of history. Nobody survives this one. I knew this last August. I wept at my desk after I got off the phone with him. I went home that afternoon and listened to his music and wept some more. I wept a lot in the early days and months. I have wondered if I grieved it so much before it happened that I was a little numb to it after he left us. Maybe. I don’t know.

     But this morning, sitting at my desk getting ready to pray and then go to my work day, it hit me again, and I finally wanted to write about it. Rick once told me, and told others quite often, that writing -for him—was like prayer. Something internal took place when Rick began writing a song and it was sacred. I understand it now that I write. This is the gift God implanted in my soul when He knit me in the womb and when I do this thing I am treading on sacred ground. Preachers must feel this when they stand in the pulpit. Doctors must feel this when they are in surgery.

Rick felt it when he gave us incredible songs. Incredible, honest, transparent, catchy, memorable, enjoyable songs.

     I’ve always listened to great music and wondered, sometimes, at what I was hearing. I always listened to them and thought how this was what was living in someone’s soul for days or months or years and this is what came out. I’ve listened to Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album and marveled how all sound lived in the heart and mind of a 25-year-old young man from New Jersey. I've had tears in my eyes at the beauty of some of Little Steven Van Zandt's music (especially with Southside Johnny) and been amazed that all those sounds came out of one man's heart. 

     I’ve listened to John Hiatt and been amazed that a seemingly simple guy could hold such beauty in his heart and manage to get it out on paper. I’ve sat slack-jawed at Stevie Ray Vaughan and realized all that amazing music had been swimming around in the heart of a sometimes-tormented little kid from the poor side of Dallas who couldn’t even read music. Yet he managed to make some of the best music this world has ever heard.

     The same things would happen when I would listen to Rick’s music. And maybe it’s because I knew him well and called him friend, or maybe it’s that his style was exactly what I loved in music and it grabbed me so tightly from the very first note I ever heard. Or maybe it’s both of those things coupled with the fact that this was a large, remarkable person who left such a giant void in this world that most of his friends remain speechless still, three weeks after his leaving us.

     Things lived in Rick’s heart that spoke so clearly and so loudly that I wondered how he contained them. Rick wrestled with religion, but he loved Jesus deeply. One can’t write a song like “Man of No Reputation” and not love Jesus deeply and be well-acquainted with who He was. Rick could rail at a theological point he disagreed with, with the force of a hurricane and the venom of a cobra. And then sing about the Jesus he trusted in with a passion and honesty that goes missing these days, among the current crop of CCM “stars.”

     Rick was far from perfect. But Rick never lied about his imperfections. His friend and band-mate Mark Robertson said it so perfectly; “Rick was just like you and me…only way more.” And he was.

     When he was happy, your sides would hurt with laughter. When he was cynical and sarcastic, you would laugh until you had tears in your eyes, so long as sarcasm and cynicism were your cup of tea. When he was angry…God help anyone on the wrong side of that topic. But when you were his friend, you were his family and he never stayed mad for long. Not if he really loved you. And thankfully…Rick Elias loved me. Our last eight months of conversations were peppered with “Thank you’s” and “I love you brother’s”

     We spent time trying to laugh at as much of this final act as we could, all the while knowing that both of us had read the last scene and knew how this was going to end. Once in a while, Rick would break down a little. He was worried about his wife Linda. His kids. His granddaughters. His friends. He was worried about what they were thinking and feeling and whether they would be okay after he was gone. He didn’t have any concrete answers about those things and that troubled him.

     Maybe his biggest frustration, outside of his family and their comfort with this, was his entire inability to play anymore. Rick was a musician. He was a musician. This was his life. This was his heart and his soul and his best ability to communicate all that his giant, mysterious heart contained. The location of the tumor made communication a chore. Words were forming in his head as rapidly as they always had but there was a disconnect between the mind and the mouth. He would stumble to say what he was wanting to say, or he’d forget what he wanted to say or which word he wanted to use, and the frustration would eat at him.

     Early on in this diagnosis he had fallen and broken his middle finger on his left hand. It was so bad that they were talking of amputating it, but they managed to keep it. But it was frozen in a three-quarters-extended position, unable to bend, like Rick was giving the finger to the world for the rest of his days. If you knew Rick Elias…this was perfect.

     Aside from being grotesque and comical at once, it was heartbreaking. Because the frozen middle finger prevented Rick from playing guitar anymore and this broke his heart. The last lengthy conversation we’d had, back in March, was about this. He said he felt like Job. Like God had stripped him of the very thing he had identified himself with for his entire life. He couldn’t play. He couldn’t write. He couldn’t even remember the words to all those songs he’d written.

All those songs.

All those wonderful, amazing, incredible songs.

     A few days after that conversation, I called him and told him briefly; “Man I don’t think you’re living “Job” (Rick had written an album based on his readings of the Book of Job and had, at one point, told me he felt like now God was making him live out the lyrics) I said “You’re living out “Stripped.” Stripped was the last song on his first album. A song about a man who stands before God, broken and humbled by his seeming continuous failings and faults, and yet who finds out that being stripped of all the pretense of correct Christian living and standing “naked, humbled, but not betrayed” was actually where the freedom was found. It’s where the love of God was most clearly pronounced. I told him that I felt like God had permitted the loss of his music for the final months of his life, because He’d wanted these months to Himself. Just Him and Rick. Getting things right, getting things out in the open…

…coming home.

     In the end, I think that is what was happening. Rick was coming home. He limped his way back to the front door, his armor dented and a bit rusty, his battle gear broken and held together with bailing wire and duct tape, but with some amazing stories from the field, and the contented look of a warrior who had enough of battle and was laying down his weapons to sit by the fire for a few last days.

     Rick Elias is gone. And the hole he left in my heart is so big, so deep, so uncharted, that I might never -this side of Heaven—understand how big it really is. I know it’s big enough that it hurts this much. I know it’s big enough that it will never be covered over, not with all the hallowed ground of his music or the memories, or the pictures in my heart. I’m only now beginning to feel the depth of this loss and I fear that there will be days when I descend a little too deep and the weight will crush me, and the tears will flow like a river.

     I miss you, dearest friend. I miss the laughter and the anger. The sacred and the profane. The way we could be so mad at each other about something so inconsequential, and then laugh about how stupid it was that something so innocuous came between us, and all would be right again. I miss the incredibly intelligent commentary on life, that you brought. Even if I disagreed sometimes, it was still incredibly thought-out, incredibly spoken, and incredibly funny.  I miss the songs. I miss the stories. I miss the big softy that lived inside that cave-man that you showed the world. I miss your love for Linda and for your kids and for those granddaughters, and for your friends.

     I’m building some birdhouses in my basement, because I know you loved them. I needed something besides music to remember you by and to honor you with. I decided it’ll be bird houses. And a fire pit. And love for my friends. And love for Jesus.

…and your music.

I love you brother…

We’ll see you soon

 **Rick's battle left some large medical expenses. PLEASE consider helping the family by donating here:

Rick's Medical Fund

I Was Here...Saying a long goodbye to a dear friend

     This is a hard week. It’s been a hard few months, bookended within a hard year. Just hard. I turn fifty-five this week. It’s been hard for me. It’s not the number…it’s the regrets.

I hate my birthday. I think I always have. There are reasons why and I won’t go into them here. But by the time I was thirty, I stopped celebrating my birthday at all. I just chose to go to work or school and act like it was just another day, until it finally became just another day.

     But this week is hard. Harder than usual. In the midst of my usual self-assessment and subsequent sadness over all that should have been, might have been, and probably never will be, I’m also now forced to begin the grieving process for one of the dearest friends I have ever had.

     My friend Rick has terminal cancer. I can’t even look at the words as I type them. I can’t accept this and I can’t believe it. Rick has been my friend for almost thirty years now. He was a Christian musician and I began as just a fan, met him almost by accident, and we became friends. I am the oldest in my family, so I never had a big brother. But I had Rick.

     I am watching him fight bravely. Fight the disease and fight the prognosis, and fight the sadness and the unrelenting assault of the illness. Cancer doesn’t have a game plan. It has no time limits. It can move slowly or invade like a lightning strike. It doesn’t care. It’s just a bunch of unfeeling cells with only one thing programmed into its code.

     My friend is doing his best to refuse surrender. He will find ways to make me laugh when I call. He’ll joke about his plight. He’s good at this…good enough that I can’t tell if he’s just being brave for everyone else, or if he’s really this hopeful. Like maybe he knows something we don’t. Like they found a cure and it’s being rolled out thirteen days from now and he is number three on the list and everything is secretly going to be just fine. Like he’s just holding this card close to his chest until a day or so beforehand and then he’ll tell us all, and we’ll go have dinner together and celebrate.

     I know none of this is true but Rick’s humor and ease makes me wish, and believe just a little. I’m in denial. I know it. But I can’t bring myself to accepting this. I can’t grasp a world without Rick Elias and the music, and the conversations, and the Christmas Party, and the Superbowl commentary. (Rick’s father-in-law was an NFL coach and his wife can take over a football viewing party like no other woman)

     There is a certain self-satisfaction with being a fan of someone who exists slightly on the outside of a genre. It’s like a badge of honor that tells the world that your tastes are a little more discriminating. My musical tastes were always this way. My record collection was, for the most part, made up of names you know, but you don’t know any of their stuff. I reveled in converting my friends to the sounds of Southside Johnny, Little Steven, Willy Deville…and Rick Elias.

Usually the first response was “That’s Christian music? That’s way too good to be Christian music.”

And it was. It was because, for the last twenty years or so, especially since the plague of “praise and worship” took over everything on the airwaves, Christian music has been horrible. Horrible like “I’d rather hear the “Brady-Kids-singing” horrible. The last record I cared about was Rick’s “Job” album and before that, “The Jesus Record” which was Rich Mullins’ posthumous masterpiece. I stopped listening to the genre…then I stopped caring about it. That’s sad. And that’s why we needed Rick in the first place.

     This is weighing on me as I have dealt with this terrible illness that my friend has and with the inevitable goodbye, and with the gaping hole in my heart, and with the snapshots of all the moments we’ve shared. I can’t stop the movie that plays in my soul, and I don’t want to. But sometimes watching it hurts even more.

     Three weeks ago I wrote him a letter. I debated sending it because I was afraid it was sounding like I was eulogizing my friend before he was gone. Like I was giving up. But I wanted…I desperately needed, to know that he heard my words sooner, not later. I wanted to be certain that he knew I loved him. That I was honored by his friendship. That I bore witness to this life of his. That someone stood up and said “I see you.” That he knew that others knew he was here.

     That’s really the point of this piece today. Because Rick is facing something that ultimately we all face, and for me it has only served to emphasize the internal wrestling I’ve been experiencing for over a year now. I’m getting older. Certainly not old, but I’m older. And I wonder, as fifty-five approaches in a few days, did anyone know I was here?

My daughter knows, of course. A few of my friends I suppose. But otherwise I wonder about the value of the life I’ve led so far. If I was somehow undone from history, what would the world look like?

     I’ve walked most of this walk of mine alone. That’s simply a fact. I didn’t grow up in a home where I was valued very much and I learned early on to just make my own way. That’s great for survival, but in the long term, it doesn’t lend itself to the feeling that somehow, someone in the crowd of six billion humans saw you. I’m questioning this now as I turn fifty-five, and as my friend faces eternity. Who saw me? Who saw Rick?

     I wrote him that long letter and sent it last week, after a few days of debating it in my heart. I hoped he would understand what I was saying, and what I was not. I wanted him to know that I saw him. That I see the footprints of his life and his work and some of those prints are on the sacred ground of my own heart. I saw the man he is and the dad he is and the husband he is and the Christian he is. I’ve seen the good and the bad and the in-between. And I stand as a witness to a life well lived. A job well done. A body of work that is superior to many who have achieved more fame, on far less talent.

     He’s been my friend. My friend when I was flying high and when I crashed on his couch. My friend when we disagreed, sometimes vehemently, and my friend when we were in complete unity. He read my writing and laughed at my jokes. He’d send me an email with a new song inside. “Don’t share this yet, but what do you think?” or he’d call me and ask me to come over and just hang out, because he knew I was a new divorcee, and I was his friend, and his friend was hurting.

     I am angry with myself that I have not learned this lesson already by now. This lesson of telling people you love them while there is plenty of time for them to accept it, and process it, and live in the truth of it, and let it inspire them. Rick and I –thankfully—kept short accounts. Twice I remember us disagreeing so passionately that we stopped speaking. In both cases the silence ended fairly soon and we were sorry it happened at all.

     My friend’s life and death battle has taught me, reminded me really, that nothing is forever and nothing should be taken for granted. If you love someone…tell them. Whether you love them as a friend or romantically or whatever, tell them. Tell them what they've meant to you, and why. Tell them how bland and boring life would be without them. Tell them what they've added to your life. Give examples. Remember moments. Thank them for making your life better. Hold on tightly. Laugh at yourselves. Tell them you love them. Make sure they know. Make sure they know how invaluable their life was to yours. How flavorless your banquet would have been without the dish they brought. Go ahead and cry. It's in those tears, and in that brokenness that the love you hold for them can escape the bonds of safety and propriety, and you can feel it in all its depth.

     Say it. Go ahead and SAY IT! I love you, my dear friend. You have meant more to me than all these words of mine can ever express. You have brought me laughter, tears, joy, depth, anger, connection, hope, despair, a glimpse of the Holy, the faint scent of the profane, and the soft flutter of the occasional angel wing. The steps we took together covered more ground than all my steps alone ever could.

     Hold nothing back. Because ultimately, in this crowded world of six billion people, it’s hard to be seen. Hard to be recognized. Hard to feel that someone, anyone, can pick your face out of the maddening crowd.

     Friends are that for each other. The witness to the life each other has led and the chronicler of the victories and defeats and the ground gained and lost. I am determined, more than ever now, to not let even one of my friends go through this life without them hearing me tell them I love them. And why. And what that love has done in this hard heart of mine.

     Maybe in that way, this long goodbye I am saying to my dear friend Rick, will have meaning and purpose that extends beyond his life, and into the concentric circles where his life and mine have overlapped.

     That, and the wonderful music he has bestowed on us all, will keep him fresh in my heart, painful as it will be, until I see him again.

Tell them you love them…

* If you would like to help my friend Rick and his family please consider giving here:
Go Fund Me for Rick Elias