The story behind this is so insanely tragic, yet so...human.

Now, almost two weeks ago, one of the guys who works for one of the guitarists in the band was on his way to lunch on his motorcycle. (You with me so far?) Northern California is very condusive to the use of motorcycles. Riding at this time of year must be a blast. Having owned a motorcylce for five years in my twenties, and loving to ride in the late spring / early summer in the Northeast, the entire spring out here is similar to the weather at that time of year back East.

Well, this guy was at a traffic light, waiting to take a left turn. An undocumented worker (you like that word choice?) with five prior serious vehicle violations, and no driver's license, hits this guy from behind. He just doesn't just hit him, he totally runs him over. Even more tragically is that the guy who was hit was not dead on arrival to the hospital, he suffered a few more hours. Now, he was not conscious, but being we know so little about brain function, no one truly knows how cognizant he was of what happened, or what was going on.

Terrible. Tragic. And then the real tragic and human element to it -- he left behind a wife and five kids.

Ten days after the fatal accident we played the benefit. The guy's wife was there...and so were her kids. The youngest must have been around 12 years old. The oldest were young adults. I don't know if this made it any easier or harder, but it made it more real. Seeing an adult grieve is something I can wrap my head around. Seeing a child dealing so...innocently... with this death of his father is unnerving.

My grandmother did always say in the face of adversity, when she would still keep pluggin along with a smile on her face and a happy demeanor, "what choice do you have?"

Maybe that's the beauty of a child's innocence, and still un-formed understanding of the permanence of death.

I was the first to arrive at the scene, which allowed me to have a beer, meet the guy's wife, and the kids, and to settle in to environment of the evening. Like previous death-related events I have witnessed, in some cases I was mute, and in others I talked to the point of annoying myself.

Eventually the others in the band arrived, and we got up on stage to play. Now I didn't know this guy from a hole in the wall, but across from the stage, on a blank, white wall, was a looping slide show with pictures of this man as a boy, as an adolescent, as a young adult, as a father, as a husband, and I when the leader of band -- who is a great showman -- chose the songs for us to play, one seamlessly moving into another, I found it hard not be choked up. One song of his that we played, a song he calls Psalm 23, embraced the tenor of the entire evening. Sorrow and hope. Light and optimism in the face of darkness and dispair.

As Joseph Campbell said, "the human condition is about shared misery." And maybe the arrival of a few total strangers to play some music to celebrate the life of a man so tragically taken away so prematurely..,maybe that arrival helped diffuse some of that misery, helping the wife, and kids, and friends to deal with the loss, the pain of which will never truly go away, but get smaller with time.

At the very end of the evening, as I was carrying my equipment out to my car, the man's wife stopped me, and the band leader, and asked to take a picture with us. She asked for this. I guess we did have an impact. I guess we did help sooth some dispair. I guess we did help share some of the misery, and lighten her burden ever so little. As she thanked us, both the band leader and I practically genuflected in saying, "no, the honor, was ours."

And it was. How much more can you feel connected to another individual, and a community to know that you helped ease the pain of loss? And not only loss, but loss that none of us will ever be able to avoid.