A Circle of Stones

Just like my Scottish ancestors. A circle of stones. 

I still remember that day my dad opened the car door and introduced me to the paradise of Superior Township. Dad busted his butt twelve hours a day in the dirt for decades and finally got his nice house in the country. My family is baptized in Michigan soil. The gift my parents had given me was invaluable, they set my body and spirit free to roam the forests and fields of rural Michigan. I fell in love. I've always felt in tune with the earth, like the very stones of my hometown call out to me almost audibly. It's found throughout my poetry and songs, and I've never been able to shake it.

People often think of me as some kind of adventurer, I admit to fostering this perception a bit, so cut me some slack. The truth is, I spent most of my time away wishing I was back home in Plymouth, or Wolverine, where even the scrub pines call out to my soul. I saw the world in its raw form, and I needed Michigan dirt like medicine.

I hope everyone gets the chance to feel real satisfaction with their lives at least once. It's an amazing feeling, and I've found that it helps in the dying process. Yes, I can define that time. I had a little condo in downtown Plymouth. I was deeply in love with a beautiful girl who worked buying and selling stones, another rockhound. She moonlighted as a barista in a coffee shop in town where the mochas were fantastic, and people would crowd in to listen to me pick lousy guitar and sing gospel and blue-collar tunes. She made that beautiful town turn into magic. I was working sixty hours a week in Michigan dirt, and we struggled to make ends meet, yet life was beautiful, simple, and vibrant. It was genuine happiness, and we both knew it. Then I got sick.

Life hasn't ended. I was given a death sentence in 2011. I asked the neurologist at U of M what I should do, and she looked me right in the eye and said, "Start getting your affairs in order." I thought for a while about what that meant. I had to tell my beautiful Kate that I was dying, and set her free to go live the rest of her life while I wasted and died
.
She didn't go. Instead, she became my rock. I set my compass by her; she gave me purpose and direction. So together we got my affairs in order.  We rode our bikes to the little Baptist church and got married. We bought a house. We had a beautiful baby girl, followed by a beautiful baby boy. I've long surpassed my expiration date, and God continues to give me time with my family. Nobody lives forever, though.

I've never been a cemetery kind of guy. I wonder how many people actually consider how they want to be treated after they pass. I have the opportunity to make my own arrangements. I don't want my family, in the midst of grief, scrambling to decide what I would have wanted. I certainly don't want to end up as taxidermy, stuffed in a fancy box that costs more than any pickup I ever owned. That's not me. I'm not the polished marble kind of guy, either. I'm a Michigan boulder, rolled in dirt and snow. I want my resting place to reflect my life; simple, grounded, and covered in Michigan dirt. Besides, who doesn't want to design and build their own monument?

I'll go up to Wolverine in August, to the land my great grandparents farmed. Just like my ancestors in Scotland, with the help of my family I will build a circle of native stones. Eight stones, each one a point on the compass rose, and a stone in the center. It will align seven degrees west of magnetic north, to follow the stars instead of the compass. People who are dear to me will place the stones, and when I cross the Jordan, my ashes will go behind the true north stone, to wait for my lover and soulmate.

Frankie and Penn with my stones.

Thought That I'd Be Lonesome Without You

A
Thought that I'd be lonesome without you,

D  A

turns out that wasn't really true.

D  A

I couldn't weave my world around you

E

wondering if you ever found a clue.

Thought that I might die without your touch,

turns out it doesn't hurt so much.

I'm the bigger man for knowing

I can stand without you as a crutch.

D  A  D  A

You might find it awkward, me saying this to you,

D  A  E

but I've got no one else to say it to,

D  A

but I've got a ghost in the basement, and a raccoon in the attic,

D A

and a banker who keeps telling me I'm bad at mathematics.

D  A  E

I don't play a very good guitar, but I'm not as lousy as I used to be.

E

Wouldn't you agree?

D  A

I don't believe our story is complete.

D  A

I do believe that again we shall meet

D  A  E

when the Irish pubs vomit their patrons back out on the street.

A
Thought that I'd be lonesome without you.

Thought that things would never be the same,

turns out things never really change.

It just becomes a new fixture,

a picture in someone else's frame.

But the evening sun's still setting over Traverse Bay.

A Michigan breeze just blew my cares away

You may think I'm crazy, that may be a fact.

The answer just depends on who you ask.

Ask the ghost in the basement, or the raccoon in the attic,

the banker who keeps telling me I'm bad at mathematics.

The skeletons in my closet that rattle their bones at night when I try to sleep,

giving me the creeps.

I don't believe that our story is complete.

I do believe that again we shall meet

when the Irish pubs vomit their patrons back out on the street.

Tony Lollio 2007