July 4, 2018. The last day I ever spoke to my grandma. Her last trip around the sun. 

I completed the rough demo for “I Can’t Make You Stay,” a song I wrote shortly after learning of her terminal diagnosis (recording below). It’s about death as much as it is about love, to me anyway, and it’s perhaps my best work to date. 

In no more than three minutes, I plucked the song’s chorus out of the ether with practically no revisions needed. Definitely the coolest moment I’ve had as a songwriter. 

Finally, a little later on an Independence Day run, I encountered a terrified, lost dog wandering the streets amidst the fireworks and chaos. No one in that immediate area wanted to help her so the task fell on me. I improvised…

Using my $9.99 earbuds as a leash, I walked her home — a mile-plus trek — and quickly located her owner via the Nextdoor app. 

July 5: My grandma died, around 0900. I was sad and undoubtedly shed some tears, but I knew the prognosis and I was prepared. 

She led a remarkable life and enjoyed 84 complete years, along with five tolerable years in a nursing home after her stroke, which she devoted almost entirely to her family and church. 

As I said in my eulogy a few weeks later, she was the most selfless and overall the best person I ever knew. Brief, upbeat excerpt attached. 

July 6th: Midnight. In grief and running on no sleep, I worked the graveyard security shift at a rural hospital in Northern Washington State — an ill-advised maneuver on my part, perhaps.  

During a shift I’ll never forget, the staff sparred over how to manage unruly guests, I smoked my first two cigarettes in as many years, and the frosty 22-year-old receptionist told me I was “too compassionate” to be an effective security guard. 

I remember spending a good chunk of the night hiding in the hospital’s boiler room, staring up into rafters and feeling like I was underwater. 

Also, the hospital’s house supervisor unknowingly quoted the title of my newest song. 

Speaking to a disgruntled, unstable patient who’d sustained a drunken injury on the Fourth of July, he tried to assuage her many concerns as she threatened to leave (again) and sought treatment simultaneously (again). 

“I can’t make you stay,” he told her flatly, attempting to conceal his frustration. 

Unbelievably, that was the first time I’d ever heard anyone utter the phrase. 

Fate? Happenstance? A message from beyond? None of the above? Who the hell knows. 

Three years later I still miss my grandma. And I tell the full story behind it in my book, Love Songs and Suicide: A Travel Memoir, Romance, and Tragic Musical Comedy. 

You can check out “I Can’t Make You Stay” below.