Track 3, Side 2: Night Life by Willie Nelson

Feeling grateful for the stories a real down-and-outer

My dad taught me every epic journey deserves a great soundtrack. My PalliMed Mixtape is the story of my Palliative Medicine Fellowship year, told in 15 songs.

(Photo: discogs.com)

Night Life on Apple Music

I haven’t worked an overnight ER shift in over 13 months now. I don’t miss the overnights at all. I do kind of miss my pre-work night shift routine, though.

Before driving in to the hospital at night, I would sit still for a spell, freshly showered and in my scrubs. The kids would be asleep (they were younger then), the dogs, too. My wife would be settling down. Some relaxing music by Gregory Alan Isakov, Iron & Wine, or The XX would play quietly in our dark house as I sipped a fresh cup of coffee. It was a meditative time, to be sure. Sometimes I’d read by lamplight and say a few prayers. When the kitchen clock finally insisted it was time to go, I’d fire up the truck and roll down the windows for the drive in to the hospital.

It’s a strange feeling starting your work day at 11 pm as the rest of the world has wound down, but this unusual job had its perks. The twenty minute drive through the dark outskirts of the city was lovely and carefree. The family tucked in and sleeping peacefully in my rearview mirror, the terrors of the graveyard shift not yet mine to combat—for those twenty minutes, no one needed me. It was a brief suspension of my adult responsibilities that I came to relish. I floated to work many nights, my left arm dancing in the wind outside the truck, feeling like a Wright brother on Kitty Hawk, just like I was back on one of the dreamy road trips that defined my early twenties.

The song that most often accompanied this twenty minute escape was Night Life by Willie Nelson. His early stuff has always just put me in the best mood, and this song seemed just about right for a night shift.

When the evening sun goes down / You will find me hangin’ ‘round / The night life ain’t no good life / But it’s my life

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Willie wrote Night Life in 1960. It still resonates. As many great country songs do, it gives voice to a real down-and-outer, a loveable loser, a charming scoundrel. Every time I hear it now, I think of Pattie, an ornery old cuss of a patient I took care of earlier this year. Night Life might as well have been her theme song.

Mine is just another scene / From the world of broken dreams

Try putting yourself in Pattie’s place—imagine living in a homeless shelter.  Yikes.  Now imagine living in a homeless shelter after your left leg was amputated above the knee.  Nope.  Now imagine living in a homeless shelter after your right leg was amputated above the knee, too.  Geez. No thanks.

Well, that was Pattie’s life, legless in a homeless shelter.  She wasn’t psyched about it, but neither was she despondent. I wonder if Pattie was able to stay positive because she knew she wasn’t alone at her shelter.

Many people just like me / Dreaming of old used-to-be’s

Pattie was proud of her community and wanted to give back to it.  She even had plans to help plant a new garden at the shelter, if she ever got out of the hospital.  She no longer had legs, but she had the know-how and the determination, and she was going to figure it out. 

She’d now been in the hospital a long time, dealing with a lot of pain, and I thought she might benefit from some music therapy.  We wheeled the record player cart up to her room, and I asked her if I could play her some music.  Maybe some Willie Nelson.  Who wouldn’t like that?

Listen to the blues, they’re playin’ / Listen to what the blues are sayin’

She had the most unusual response when we brought in the record player.  She did not want to hear any music—not while we were in the room with her anyway—but she instead demanded to hold and inspect each vinyl.  Ok. Why not?

I handed her small stacks of albums, a half dozen at a time, until she’d beheld all fifty.  Like a kid on Christmas morning opening presents, each new record was a treasure to her.  Her eyes lit up, and she flashed her toothless smile as she saw the titles that she’d listened to throughout her life.

The records were little story prompts, like flipping through an old scrapbook.  It seemed she had a story for each one. “The third time I met Dean Martin I was in Las Vegas…” “Back when I was riding on Willie’s bus…” “The second time my brother and I snuck into a Led Zeppelin concert…” She really bowled me over. What a life she had lived! Eventually all these happy music memories led to some less enjoyable recollections, too.

Pattie had lived hard and made no apologies for it.  She was very honest about it all.  A lot of drugs, a lot of broken relationships, a lot of dangerous jobs, a lot of dangerous company.  She wasn’t accustomed to squares like me listening to yarns from her wild past, but she kept me riveted.  I could even tell she felt obliged to protect me from the rawness of some of her harder chapters. I think my delicate sensibilities could have handled it, but I respected her boundaries.

And the nightlife ain’t no good life / But it’s my life

I lingered as long as I could, listening to her meanderings, and I thought about how many protections big and small (how much grace!) have kept me from a life as hard as Pattie’s.  I thanked her for her stories, windows into another world that I am not usually invited to see.

Pattie is out of the hospital now, and I hope that she’s been able to do some work on that garden. I hope her community has welcomed her back with open arms and that she feels at home. I hope that she is able to find little moments now and then when she, too, feels carefree, as if she’s cruising in a car, arm out the window waving in the wind, dreaming of some old used-to-be’s—maybe even daring to dream of some uncloudy days yet to come.

(Photo: discogs.com)

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Tell me, Crash Cart Campfire Friends:

• Willie just turned 90. What are your top five Willie songs?

• What music would get you ready for a night shift?

• What are you grateful for today?