Today is TSO

To explain the significance and importance of Trans Siberian Orchestra in my life, in this our story is pretty near impossible.  But I gotta try.  

It was the winter.  That winter.  A couple of fine folks in Colorado got me tickets to see them since I was there while Murphy was receiving care at CSU.  And it was my birthday.  

Being the music lover I am, I was sure I heard of them.  But even if I did, nothing could've prepared me for it...

An Angel Came Down was the first piece they performed and I was blown away. To put it into context, I've seen Pavarotti live, the three tenors, and Yo Yo Ma and even Kitaro... There was a hot, hot girl in a red sequined dress playing the electric violin that I still think about from time to time... 

Anyway, I was in rapture.  Pop culture has ruined the word 'awesome' but it was.  I was a kid witnessing the spirit of Christmas for the first time.  

And yet I hated it.  Because somewhere in a distant parking lot, alone and cold was Murphy.  He never left my side and the TSO concert was as far as I went from him.  We didn't stay for the second set because I couldn't. Even though thoroughly bundled up in the SUV.

And then after Murphy died, I was up in Bowling Green KY (heh, that's my TX roots showing - everything is 'up'), for two reasons.  To meet Indy for the first time and attend a fundraiser for their animal shelter.  It was the coolest of its kind - it was in a cave that Jesse James and his gang hung out in if my memory serves me well. 

Even amidst all the beauty, glamour, and glitz that I was graciously invited to be a part of, I didn't stay long, 30 minutes maybe, because I couldn't.  I left there and drove to a church parking lot and put my TSO CD in, listening to it for hours.  It must've been hours because someone called the police.  

The officer politely asked me why I was there.  I didn't know if he meant why I was in The City of White Squirrels, the parking lot of a church in the middle of the night, or asking a more theological question.  But I only had one answer.  

"I miss my son."  

He nodded and said goodnight.  I never asked his name.  

This is my Christmas story