Neon Gravestones

As a youngin', I listened to this very obscure and indie band called Twenty One Pilots. People often joke that when asked what genre they play, your answer is "yes" or something of the like. They experiment, they create, and they do not conform to the music industry and its boxes. Something I've taken as wild inspiration for how I live my life now. But I digress.

Some of my favorite songs of theirs are ones that hit hard at the emotionally turbulent time at which I listened to them most, such as "Trees," "Addict with a Pen," "Ride," and "Fall Away." Each of these songs (except maybe Ride, which was pretty much just my hype song) had a very personal and spiritual connection for me, something perhaps I should explore in another post. I had enjoyed their album Trench, but there wasn't a connection there. This was probably their most experimental album yet, and their slow, deep, and somewhat depressing lament on the media's glorification of dying young, "Neon Gravestones," was not exactly what I was interested in consuming at the time.

Fast forward a few years, and as I've grown and matured into the early-20-something I am, I've started to pay more attention to the people in the older generations around me. I've had to. We lost my maternal grandma to dementia during my senior year of college. It hit our family hard. It was around Christmas-time, and every Christmas since has been achingly bittersweet. The very next year, before boarding the flight to head home from a particularly difficult four months living on the polar opposite coast of America, we got the call that my paternal Grandpa had died from his long battle with Parkinson's.

In the span of approximately 10 months, I'd lost two of my grandparents, one from each side. Now, I'm not here to discuss at length how I responded to this immediately. Instead, I want to reflect on what happened during January this year. My maternal Granddaddy and my paternal Grandmother had their birthdays within a week of each other.

These birthdays suddenly felt extremely important. I didn't really acknowledge the change in priority that had taken place somewhere in my subconscious, but I rearranged my schedule and cleared off both days to go celebrate with them. As I sat in their dimly lit kitchens with a scattering of people that had just taken the evening to come eat cake, I documented what might be one of their last few birthdays.

I don't say this to be morbid. Instead, I hope it's received in the spirit of Twenty One Pilots' song "Neon Gravestones," at least, the last verse. These celebrations knocked the memory loose in my brain of a song I hadn't listened to for a long time. Don't get me wrong, Twenty One Pilots still makes the rotations in my Spotify listening, but this song in particular had stayed buried for a while (no pun intended).

I understood then why my priorities had shifted. I understood just a bit more of what it meant to age. Or rather, what it meant to live.

"I'm not disrespecting what was left behind

Just pleading that it does not get glorified

Maybe we swap out what it is that we hold so high:

Find your grandparents or someone of age

Pay some respects for the path that they paved

To life they were dedicated

Now, that should be celebrated!"

-Neon Gravestones, Twenty One Pilots