All We Have is Right Now

I remember the day John Denver’s plane crashed. 

I was sitting in the family room nursing my newborn son, occasionally glancing at the news on TV. Suddenly John Denver’s smiling face appeared. It took a moment for the captioned words to register.

“…Plane crash…Monterey Bay…dead…”

I sat there in complete shock.

No, no, nooooo.

My parents introduced me to John Denver’s music in 1971 when the Poems, Prayers, and Promises album was released. I instantly loved his music. Every song told a story and I love stories.

In elementary school, I began losing my hearing but I still loved music.  As long as I had the lyrics to read I could follow the words. 

Shortly after I became pregnant with my first son I attended a concert in Indiana with my mom, my sister, and my friend Sue. When we arrived, I asked the concert manager to give John a letter. I told him how much his music meant to me. This was the first concert of his that I would experience his music with sign language interpreters (I became deaf from a barefoot water ski fall as a teen.) I asked if we could meet him after the concert.

We had front row seats and the music was amazing–a much smaller theater than the stadium concerts when I was a kid. John Denver acknowledged the interpreters and he sang to us.

At the very end, John mentioned that he received letters and he very much wanted to meet his fans but he had to get on the road to the next gig.

Seeing the remnants of his plane floating in the water made me realize that there would never be another chance to hear him play on stage ever again. 

A line from one of his songs came to mind:

“The moment and hand is the only thing we really own.”