August… It Hits Different This Time

August 4, 2025

It’s that time of the year again. You flip your figurative calendar over from July 31st to August 1st, and you know a few things are certain. It is still around 100 degrees out, yet you can feel the cooler breezes of fall around the corner. Gourds-a-plenty begin to spring up around you at the grocery store. You begin to see the seasonal Halloween decorations hit your Instagram feed (btw, unpaid shoutout to Pottery Barn’s seasonal selections… they are everythinggg!). While these seasonal delights all happen every year, there is now a new August staple for many: Taylor Swift’s critically acclaimed “August” from her Grammy-slaying album Folklore.

This song is, for most women (and let’s be real, most gay men) a song that beckons imagery of a time in one’s life when they were in love, conjuring specific snapshots of that former relationship. It’s “new age yacht rock” in the best way and makes the perfect beach song. For me, however, certain lyrics bring up memories of tougher times.

“Salt air, and the rust on your door. I never needed anything more.”

When this song was in its maiden era, I was living with my mother in Florida full-time as her caregiver while she was beginning treatments for a recently found leukemia. Like many caregivers will tell you, it’s very tough caring for a parent. You often manage their numerous appointments, meals, bathing, transportation, and mental health needs. You have to become a parent to your parent. Many caregivers (and parents) will also tell you that their needs will always come before your own, so you have to find moments to take care of yourself. For me, that time came in the form of sitting on the beach when I found the time. “August” became my happy place beach song.

Cancer is a tough journey for all parties involved. One of the crucial elements needed in a successful cancer treatment is hope. Everyone needs it in the process. The patient, caregiver, doctor, friends, family: everyone needs hope that cancer treatments are successful. When this song was in my rotation, I, like everyone involved in Mom’s journey, was infectiously hopeful. Despite the symptoms of chemo, the treatments were working, and she was looking at a bone marrow transplant. I was also chosen to be her donor, so everyone was beyond hopeful for an actual cure. After weeks of testing, we were at her final blood test before the transplant procedures started. Almost overnight, her chemo began to fail at suppressing new cancerous blood cells from forming. There would be no transplant after this news. She stopped chemo shortly after and passed within two months.

For a long time, this song changed from a “happy place beach song” to a reminder of the hope that was stolen from us. Lyrics like “back when I was living for the hope of it all” now conjured painful memories through their eerie echoes.

I equate memories like these to being a new waiter and shattering a glass in a crowded dining room. As a former waiter myself, I have broken MANY glasses in front of MANY people. I speak from experience when I tell you about restaurant patron reactions to a broken glass.

Everyone will initially clutch their pearls and gasp at the sound of shattering glass during their meals. Then, there is a variety of responses. Most people will simply ignore you while you slice up your fingers, carefully picking up the pieces. Some people just stare at you in silence. Sometimes you might even get a real asshole who chuckles and even slow claps at you. One will NEVER, however, have a patron come over and help you with the mess. You might be lucky and have a busboy available to sweep up after you, but for most of us waiters, one is always “in the weeds,” dealing with it alone. And even after you think you’ve cleaned it all up, you feel that one piece you must have missed, piercing your nonslip shoes. You want to stop and deal with the pain, but you can’t because you have patrons to tend to.

Grief memories always feel like this to me: shattered glass. You have to deal with it immediately. It sometimes slices you up. And even after you think you cleaned up all of the pieces, there is always one piece left. Small and unseen. Hiding from view until it finds the perfect time to find you, vulnerable and barefoot. And when it finds its way into your foot, the pain can sometimes subside, or it can linger as you move forward with life.

"Grieving is like having broken ribs. On the outside, you look fine, but with every breath. It hurts."

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When you lose someone, you don’t know when things will shatter. You don’t know what moments in life will trigger memories that allow a brittle person to break. For me, it tends to be really small things: random Taylor Swift lyrics, an old “Grey’s Anatomy” episode I’ve probably seen five times already, my cat’s mortality (yes, I will begin to cry if I think on it for too long because she WILL live forever).

I wish we lived in a world where glasses and hearts are shatterproof, but we don’t. Grief has a particular way of isolating us while we are devastated. When these grief moments hit you, especially in happy people group settings, you have to shamefully swallow the pain and hope it passes because you assume that you are alone in this moment. While I might not always be successful in my practices, I don’t like to believe this assumption anymore.

There are so many of us out there, just like bad waiters in the same dining room, thinking we are all alone in the weeds, each picking up our shattered glasses while those around us continue with their evenings. Let’s collectively look up and see those around us who are just like us: shattered and struggling. When we begin to see each other, we can help pick up the pieces together. I am not alone in my grief, and neither are you. Now, this anxious little orphan is going to go listen to “August” (It’s been growing on me lately) and sip the month “away like a bottle of wine.”

Thanks for reading, and please share with anyone who needs to hear this.