Living on the Flip Side
Half a pound of steamed sweet Georgia shrimp with spicy garlic sauce on my plate, the boat which may have netted them from the sea docked 20 feet away, I posted on Facebook: Life is good.
Was it the words themselves, which expressed something I had not fully felt in over five years? Or was it the 12-ounce margarita with an orange liqueur floater? One or the other, or likely both, put me into a contemplative mood.
For all 40-plus years of my adult life so far, reflecting on my state of mind leads me to the words of Jimmy Buffett. (We’ll use his nickname, Bubba, to clearly distinguish him from Jim Sanford, my late husband.) Words that fit my current attitude or latitude can always be found somewhere in Bubba’s recorded catalog of hundreds of songs, most of which I know at least partially by heart.
My thoughts took wing and landed at Life on the Flip Side, the album Bubba released in May 2020. The songs had been written and recorded – and serendipitously the apropos title had been determined – prior to Covid lockdown. Upon the album’s release, Radio Margaritaville started playing the songs. I listened with mixed feelings. For the first time in my Bubba fandom, I didn’t immediately buy the CD. In fact, I waited more than three years.
For the world, 2020 was the first year of a horrific global pandemic. For me, it was also the second year of widowhood – a state of living inflicted on me without warning on January 1, 2019. Jim and I had found us a home, on an island, and were seven weeks away from moving to where there’s hardly ever any snow when his heart switched off.
You don’t have to read a lot about widowhood to uncover many expressions of the second year being the hardest. The first Valentine’s Day, the first anniversary, the first birthday, the first Christmas, etc., are all behind you. Surviving them brings a sense of relief, or even accomplishment. Whew, got through that! In the second year, it hits that you have to do it again, and again, and again, forever for the rest of your life.
If years can be named according to words yelled at the ceiling and walls, then 2019 was my What the Fuck? year. And 2020 was my OK, I’m Tired of You Being Dead year. It’s irrational, and I don’t mean to sound irreverent, but it was like the novelty of the trick that had been played on me had worn off, and it was time for Jim to show up and end the hoax. This was only enhanced by living in isolation in New York, my move to our island at best delayed, at worst canceled. I didn’t know which yet.
That was my state of mind when Bubba released Life on the Flip Side. Well, the title sure fit my life! But two songs tripped me up. In one, Oceans of Time, Bubba sings of not rushing the tide, that he (and I assume Jane, his wife) have oceans of time. I’ve always had trouble with that concept. Don’t get me wrong, I can procrastinate with the best of them on the day-to-day stuff. But when it comes to acting once a decision has been made, or moving towards a life goal, I want to get on with it.
Based on my parents having died in their mid-60’s, I’ve always advised people who say they want to retire to do it as soon as they can. My father was forced into an early retirement at 55, which gave my parents years they wouldn’t have otherwise had to enjoy life in South Florida. Jim felt the same way about retirement. In state government, we could do it at 55 with 30 years of service. Jim always said that on his 55th birthday, there would be a cartoon style Jim-shaped hole in the wall of our office building. Because he held true to his word, he enjoyed 11 years of retirement instead of only the four years or sixteen months waiting until 62 or 65 would have gleaned. And my doing the same gave us three years of retirement together, including 315 days of snow-birding on our island.
Jim’s father died less than two years after fulfilling the family’s long-held dream of buying a second home in coastal Massachusetts. Jim and I closed on our island home two months before my retirement. If asked why we were in “such a hurry,” Jim would say he wanted more time on our island than his father got to have on his. Had we taken an “oceans of time” approach instead, I don’t think I would have been eating shrimp by a shrimp boat last night, posting about the goodness of life.
In 2020, hearing Bubba sing, “You and I only have oceans of time,” I would take a break from raging at the ceiling to yell at the speaker, “WE didn’t get oceans of time!” For all my gratitude that Jim and I could retire young and enjoy some island time together, it didn’t feel as big as an ocean.
Fast forward to Labor Day Weekend, 2023, when the world learned Bubba had sailed on after battling an aggressive cancer for four years. I still struggle to process him having penned Oceans of Time in the face of a new cancer diagnosis, but knowing he did somehow feels aspirational. The song makes me feel hopeful instead of angry now.
The other Life on the Flip Side song that didn’t initially hit me right was Who Gets to Live Like This? Bubba asks how he got so lucky to live near a beach, with ships on the horizon and fish tacos on the table. You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far, I don’t think, to hear me yelling “Not us!” at the speaker in response to the eponymous refrain. If I get to ask God one question, it will be “Why were we allowed to get so close if it wasn’t meant to be?” It took me four years to decide to live like this solo, where I can walk to the beach to see ships on the horizon and to more than one place where I can arrange for fish tacos on the table.
There has been much good in my life since January 1, 2019, starting right away with all the support I received. I’ve tried to always be aware and acknowledge it. But when one of my best friends told me I would always be sad about Jim’s passing, I appreciated the break from the positivity others tried to force upon me. It felt truer than most other things people said, it still does, and I will. Every once in a while, someone posts one of those “be grateful, not sad” memes. I scroll past them, muttering about how people can feel more than one thing at a time, even though it’s hard. Eating shrimp by a shrimp boat last night was the first time in over five years it felt easy to say life – my life – despite the sadness, is good.
