A worn out tape of Chris LeDoux...

What I last ate Pizza
What I last drank Diet Pepsi
Song in my head Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old

It was sometime during my senior year in college that I started listening to country music. I went to school in Flagstaff, AZ and when you wanted to go out on a Saturday night then, you had your choice of about four places: a pool hall with frat boys, a fairly good local band bar, a hard hard rockin' lounge, or a country bar with a tree growing right up the middle of the dance floor.

After visiting all of them, I choose to spend a good amount of my time dancing with good looking cowboys in tight jeans. They were much nicer than the frat boys and smelled way better than the rockers. The music kinda grew on me. This was, of course, long before I had even realized I had a country soul .

My friend Jen took me to a concert they have every year after the rodeo comes through Phoenix. Chris LeDoux. Whatever that man was selling, I was buying. Hook, line, and sinker. I have seen Chris LeDoux in concert more than I have seen any other artist. More times than I can count or recall.

His passing yesterday has made me realize how many memories I have linked to his music. The last time I saw him perform was at Rawhide, which will be torn down shortly from it's location on Scottsdale Road and moved way out of town. I saw him in concert the night I told my good friend, who is now my husband, that either he was going to be utterly in love with me or he was not. End of story. I had a student I taught that I ran into at every single one of those concerts. I have since lost the friendship of Jen, who took me to that first concert. I saw him at Country Thunder when the middle of nowhere was Queen Creek Road.

There is something about a death that brings out the overwhelming awareness of the passage of time. This particular death has also brought memories that are the reminder of all there is in living that's good.