That Day I Met Brian Wilson

God only knows how it happened, but I met Brian Wilson on the popcorn line about an hour before his Beach Boys were set to play the post game concert after the University of Hartford basketball game vs. Canisius College in January 1987.  I can’t remember who won the game and who I went with, but I do remember when Wilson offered me half of his popcorn…The college wanted more fans in the stands so they hired the boys and since my dad was the team’s trainer, we’d go to all the games to root for the squad…but for that magical season we’d really be there to hear songs like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice (If We Were Older)” and maybe the greatest song ever, “God Only Knows.”  Wilson was a star but wasn’t much different than regular folks. He struggled like a lot of people - lost in drugs, depression, the ironic perils of fame, the struggle to be great, to write and sing the next great song. Music was his therapy, his pain, and yet his healer. Wilson used to say that a melody could break your heart and yet heal it all in the same breath. If you’re on healthcare’s frontlines, you see this all the time. Michigan Nurse Brenda Buurstra’s patients know this. Brenda used to sing “You Light Up My Life” to patients like Robert Olsen whose breathing issues had him admitted to Bronson Hospital. Despite initial expectations Robert’s lungs wouldn’t hold up, he was discharged home, probably helped by Brenda’s voice….Music is underappreciated as therapy if you ask me.  I would play Beach Boys songs shooting on my nerf hoop in the early 80s, still hum Good Vibrations every time Tommy grabs an orange soda pop out of the fridge, and I still shoot hoops in the driveway with the old “Surf’s Up” cassette tape. It all helps temper the noise, keeps me young. My daughter’s music is her therapy too – the songs she sings, the ones she writes. But like Wilson, not everything is what it seems. She didn’t get that part in the fall musical and like a lot young 20 somethings facing defeat, she worries about imperfection, loss, the unknown. But like a lot of kids, she has a voice and a dream and loves to perform. I showed Sophie a clip last night of Wilson’s performance on Ed Sullivan after news had spread of his passing, and then a clip of Brenda Buurstra the nurse singing to her patient…I told her to look at the faces of the people in the audience, not the number of YouTube views. You see if you ask me, we try to measure our value in too many ways and not always the right ones—in our healthcare businesses and non profits, in how we deal with patients, in how we parent, in the number of wins and views and likes, when maybe we just need to show up for one person. For Sophie, yeah maybe she’ll be a Bernadette Peters on Broadway or a lead singer in a band like The Beach Boys. But if not, something tells me there’s another leading role waiting for her bedside. God only knows.