When My Sister-In-Law Died of Cancer, Gord Downie Gave Me Courage
I never even liked The Tragically Hip. I’m a New Yorker, so I didn’t grow up listening to them at the cottage, my dad has no idea who they are, and, for most of my life, Gord Downie didn’t mean anything to me except as some kind of symbol of my adopted homeland, like Tim Hortons, Wayne Gretzky, or Niagara Falls. But my wife, Julie, she loves the Hip. She always has. Living with her in Toronto and covering music up here for a decade, I slowly started to understand. This band is personal, and haunting, and real. When they announced their cross-country tour this summer, just after announcing that Gord Downie has glioblastoma, the worst form of terminal brain cancer, I broke along with everyone else. It hits hard, to lose someone.
On February 5, 2013, Julie’s sister Maria died from multiple sclerosis at 38, and to get my wife out of the house, on Valentine’s Day, we saw the Tragically Hip. It worked, kind of — the show took her mind off it, maybe, and gave us a release valve: an excuse to smoke and kiss and cry and sing. So when this tour starts, I’m appreciative. I buy tickets. Downie has had rounds of chemo and radiation — he’s on what should be his deathbed — but he will not wallow. Instead, he plays his shows in a metallic leather suit and a Jaws T-shirt, regal, impish, and tight. It’s not a Greatest Hits set, exactly, and there’s no monologue that explains the situation: someone you love is dying onstage.
After losing Maria, Julie has one sister named Jayne and she’s a 43-year-old high school vice principal. In March, Jayne was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same fucking thing as Gord. Julie won’t come with me to the show because she can’t listen to the music. Jayne and I talked about seeing a concert, but she can no longer take her three-year-old out for ice cream.
So on a beautiful night in late summer, I’m alone at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, and I’m drinking, mostly Jameson and tall boys. It’s what I imagine the Grey Cup feels like in the stands. People wear homemade T-shirts and chant. “Courage (For Hugh MacLennan)” from Fully Completely (1992) starts the set and Downie, 52, wears a purple top hat with a feather. I see more than one couple hold hands. During “What Blue” from Man Machine Poem, the band’s just-released fourteenth record, Downie has his hands over his head and his eyes closed. “I can tell he looks sick,” says a nurse I meet in the stands. “His face is dry and he looks tired.” The nurse is 56, been a nurse for 30 years. “He still sounds great,” she says.
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