I’m not only glad I was able to see the final Tragically Hip concert. I was honoured. The newspaper I work for asked me to take pictures at the iconic concert for the world to see. Nearly 7,000 people showed up to Officers Square to see The Tragically Hip’s final concert.
Crowds cheered, swayed, and some shed tears. Watching in amazement as Canada’s poet laureate gave what some speculate to be his last performance. You see, Gord Downie, their lead singer, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour thats incurable.
While the crowd watched, he delivered a nearly three-hour set, sending emotion out through the microphone. Even stopping to shed tears during Grace, Too.
I am moved, not only by his strength, but his humour, his honesty, his pure raw emotion as he embraced his band mates and the Prime Minister.
Each and everyone of us faces adversity. And while some of us may feel alone sometimes, Gord reminds us, we are not.
There are simply two choices that Gord Downie had: to stop, stop singing, stop performing, stop sharing his talent with Canadians, accepting defeat for something very understandably defeating. Or, he could preserver, sing from the depth of his soul, pour his emotion, anger, hate, sadness, happiness into his music, powering what I would argue to be Canada’s biggest icon.
Downie choose to preserver, to move forward. He choose to stand in front of thousands, millions across the nation, and use the strength so many of us feel we don’t have, and give the performance of a life time.
I feel, as a sick person, I understood that need. I understood where, in the face of it all, there was a need to continue. A need to show the world who I am, one last time, to take what’s inside of me and belt it out into a microphone.
Tears do not mean weakness, and while the crowd feel silent as Downie wiped the tears from his face, we saw the pure power of what mortality means.
Mortality for many of isn’t on the forefront of our minds. We don’t think about it every day. But last night, as you look at Gord Downie, arms folded into himself, wiping away the tears, you saw the true meaning of mortality. That, in a split second, the world can change. Everything can disappear. And while that’s deeply depressing, we must remember, Downie took morality in his hands, unknown, and he said not today.
Not today; today, I sing.
And he did sing. My aunt was 49 when she lost her battle to cancer. Seemingly, the world is darker place without her in it. Gord, in a unexplainable way, made it a little brighter. He showed us, you can take life by the balls, and bring an entire nations to its feet.
The Tragically Hip, Canada’s band, was cradled in the arms of every Canadian last night, soothed into the greatest goodbye; until we meet again Gord.
