My experience with grief has been a roller coaster, as I know it is for many. When I look at the bell curve of it all, I can see the progress, the normalcy coming back into my life. The hanging frown that I could not seem to lift has faded and a smile often stretches across my face. Four years ago, when I first learned Josiah was certainly dead–and still missing–I aged ten years in a matter of weeks, but some of that has reversed as have the negative effects to my nervous system (even if I know deep down inside that I will never be able to hold the types of jobs I once was, you know, the ones with a laundry list of responsibilities and stress).

Last weekend, Brian and I headed back out into the world, grasping a hold of the festivities that our home Humboldt County has to offer. We ventured up to Arcata to see Tony Saunders, son of Merl Saunders the famed keyboard player who collaborated seamlessly with Jerry Garcia, play with his band Keystone Revisited which included star studded talent like Sunshine Garcia Becker, formerly of Furthur. What a show that was–deserving of its very own blog post which will come soon! I promise…

And then, the very next day, out to the Mattole Valley for the annual Roll on the Mattole, the small blissful festival of a fundraiser for the Honeydew Volunteer Fire Department in the valley where I first raised Josiah.

But that joy was tempered just 36 hours later when I woke up to the first of August, Jerry Garcia’s birthday and the beginning of what Deadheads refer to as the Days Between which is the period of time between Jerry’s birthday, August 1st, and his death day, August 9th. It is a time of recognition and mourning for the man and musician who made such a huge impact on so many lives. The name, “Days Between” was taken from a song by the same title and the last one written by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia just two years before Jerry’s death.

There may be no better words to describe the song than those written by Phil Lesh in his autobiography, Searching for the Sound:

Boy, do I relate to that last line when it comes to working on this project!

And now, the Days Between has taken on new meaning as Josiah was found on August 5, 2020. I remember it so clearly–horrific elation and emotions provoked by the arrival of a day that I feared would never come. What an odd thing to experience happiness over such a horrible discovery, but I did not have to stick with that emotion long. A pile of bones scattered across fallow ground far down from the highway up in Washington quickly ripped purpose from my plate and then filled it with an identity crisis that posed the question, “Now what?”

Check out this stunning version of Days Between
with Sunshine Garcia Becker on flute & vocals and Zach Nugent on guitar & vocals.

Soon, I would leave for Washington to go lay eyes Josiah’s bones before they were shipped off to be analyzed at the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Virginia, 14 months after he vanished off of the face of the earth. The writing of the first draft took a giant leap then too. In quantity yes, but chronologically too.

I was so overwhelmed, charged up and invigorated by that giant shift in both reality and perspective that I quit writing about the first 6 or so months and jumped forward to the following August. What I am now tasked with is not only a polished second draft, but filling in that eight month gap which contains plenty that needs to be written about. The process of writing a book is long, slow and certainly not for the faint of heart. Waking up each day and putting my butt in the chair–no matter where on that bell curve I find myself in–takes dedication and practice.

So, here we are in the middle of an eight day stretch, on the the three year anniversary of bellowing victoriously “He’s been found!” — a proclamation quickly followed by a fearful voice which questioned, “Who the hell am I now?”

Only today, I know the answer. I am Liz Hilderbrand, writer, advocate and mother–a woman who possesses more smiles than frowns (even if the tears still appear often) and lost bones turned to ash that sit in an urn on her shelf.

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