On Sunday August 13, 1995 there was a very large gathering at the Polo Fields in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – a memorial for Jerry Garcia, who’s passing a few days earlier on August 9th, 1995 brought forth a tsunami of grief from the worldwide Deadhead community. This official gathering , with fans, family, and his Grateful Dead bandmates came together very quickly, and had a huge turnout, with people flocking in from all over.
I was there. I had already missed a couple days of work on the 9th and 10th, and had gotten chastised by my manager, that it is not OK to take time off when a celebrity passes. I tried to explain how much bigger this was, but to no avail. I had to agree to not be paid for those days, not allowed to use sick time as family bereavement leave I had started this corporate 9-5 gig at the beginning of 1995, and was also taking a massage therapist certification course, trying to develop a new career beyond selling shirts in the lot. I hadn’t gone to many Dead shows in ’95 because of work and school, my final run being the 3 shows at Shoreline in June of ’95.
On Sunday morning, August 13th, on the bus on my way to a day of classes at massage school, I realized I needed to be in Golden Gate Park at the Jerry memorial that day more than I needed to be in class. I was on a bus headed from Venice Beach to Culver City, several hundred miles south of GGP. I did not have a car, but I did have a couple hundred dollars in the bank because of my day job. Going on a feeling, I transferred buses to one headed to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). I went straight to Southwest airlines and was able to buy a one way ticket to Oakland that left soon, I was wearing only gym shorts and a t-shirt, had a backpack with a set of massage table sheets and my anatomy textbook , and maybe $100 left on my bank card. From OAK I got the Bart to the city, and then a bus to Golden Gate Park, and was able to join the memorial gathering. It took me about 3 hours from the time I left home to the time I was in Golden Gate Park. In these pre-smartphone days, I was pretty pleased with my knowledge of public transportation to get myself there on a whim. bus>bus>plane>bus>train>bus>park!
It felt very important to me to be there. I saw the altar, and lots of friends. It felt connected. Was so glad I went, Though I quickly realized I had to get home too. I found some people i kind of knew who were headed back to the LA area from the memorial, and was back home and in bed in the wee hours of Monday morning.
I made it in to work somehow by 9am. My manager called me into her office. She said she had seen the memorial on the news the night before, and had wondered if I was there. I told her I had been. She said she was glad I went. After seeing it on the news she said she realized this was more than just a celebrity passing, that this was my tribe, and we suffered a great loss. She apologized for not understanding when I took time off the week before.
___ (~);} ___
While we remember the sadness, don’t stay stuck there. 28 years later, we still miss Jerry. But we have all lived and loved and grown so much since then. The music never stopped, and we all keep on keepin’ on.
Thank you Jerry , for all the love you brought and all the light you have shed. Grateful for the friendships and memories made along the way, all the people i have met, and experiences I have had, because of the Grateful Dead.
– happycat!
Deadheadland, California
Sunday August 13, 2023
