Ten Years After

The phone rang first thing in the morning on May 30th. My phone never rings – let alone before 7:30 AM.

“Hello?” I answered, quizzically and quietly.

“Hi Leah, it’s Jxx Lxxxxx.” Someone I used to work with – but never really got along with, for many reasons.

“Oh, hi, Jxx, er, um, uh, what’s up?” I couldn’t imagine why he would be calling me. Especially at this hour of the morning.

He had a serious tone in his voice. “Well, Leah, I know that we’ve never really gotten along or seen eye to eye on things, for whatever reason, but I wanted to let you know...Jeff Buckley is dead.”

I sat up immediately and tried to blink away the morning. “What?” I asked, in disbelief.

He proceeded to unfurl the events from the night before. Band arriving. Jeff swimming. Missing.

I ask, to clarify, “So he’s actually just missing, right?”

Jxx answers, “Well, yeah.”

I let out a sigh of relief. OK. Jeff has gone missing before. This is nothing new. It’s what he does. I am now no longer concerned, and, in fact, a little pissed off that Jxx has chosen to ruin my morning. In retrospect, I get even more mad when I find out later that Jxx bragged to everyone that he got to be the one to tell me the news.

Call it denial. Call it knowing Jeff for years. This is not a big deal. He’ll turn up. He always has, he always does.

I go about my morning in the regular fashion. I shower, get ready and head off to work.

The phone calls come in: Jules. Greg. Nick. Charlie. Troy. Lisa. Michelle. Barbara. Lydia. Marilyn. Sean. Laura. My friends and ex-co-workers. Calls marked “Urgent,” “Please call,” or even just “Thinking of You.”

People come to my office. “Why are you HERE?” I pooh-pooh them. They don’t know what I know. “He’s just missing.” Am I trying to convince myself, or convince them?

The next few days are a blur. Calls come in, the rivers of denial ebb and flow.

Something compels me to take a trip. I say to my boss, “I think I have to go to New York.” I nearly break down in her office. She’s been waiting for this. “Go. Do what you have to do.”

I'm in New York. It’s the place where I know him; the place that I feel him. The place that I last saw him. Luckily, two of my artists are playing at the Tibetan Freedom Festival, which is happening over the weekend. It justifies the trip.

I can’t possibly be in New York without thinking about Jeff. Everywhere I go, everyone I see – it is completely consuming.

I’m at the office on Wednesday, June 4 when I get the message from a co-worker, via MTV news (of all places). His body washed up on Beale Street in Memphis.

It’s real.

It really happened. Now the stages of grief officially begin...