How a Grateful Dead Song Helped Me Say Goodbye to My Dad

“For this is all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long ago”

On July 5, 2019, Sandy and I attended a Dead & Company concert at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado.

For those unaware, Dead & Company is a group composed of former members of the legendary Grateful Dead. They perform Dead covers and, for the past decade, have helped bring the band’s and Jerry Garcia’s music to a new generation of fans.

We were already followers of the good ol’ Grateful Dead, but with Jerry long gone (he died in 1995), we eagerly got on the bus for this iteration of the Dead’s timeless music. Every summer, Dead & Company played multiple nights in Boulder, and we always showed up at Folsom ready to shake our bones.

As excited as I was for this next Boulder show, however, my heart was heavy that evening. In two days, I would fly to Memphis to see my father, Phil, who was languishing in a nursing home. It would be my third trip to see him since he fell ill a few months earlier.

It was hard to admit, but I knew he wouldn’t live much longer.

Of course that was hard to admit, I tell myself now. He was my Dad. My best friend. My hero. The man I looked up to and tried to emulate my entire life. The thought of him not being around, especially after I had already lost my mother 11 years earlier, was too much to bear.

And being a thousand miles away in Colorado while he was sick in Memphis—and remarried to a despicable woman who was contributing to his demise—was devastatingly and excruciatingly sad.

As the concert began, though, I felt a semblance of happiness. I reveled in this night of normalcy as we listened to the music of the Grateful Dead and were transformed to, well, another place and time. Great live music has that effect.

One song the band played would prove to be the most transformational of all—“Box of Rain,” which is about a man caring for his dying father.

I soon realized that hearing Dead & Company play this particular song, on that particular night, was no mere coincidence.

My latest entry for “A Fan’s Notes” explains the cosmic connection I experienced on that summer eve in Boulder six years ago with a song I’d been a fan of for decades, but whose words now took on new meaning.

“Box of Rain” is the opening track on the band’s most popular and arguably best record, “American Beauty” (the album cover is this blog’s lead image).

The Grateful Dead’s lyricist, Robert Hunter, penned the song’s poignant words, but bassist Phil Lesh provided the inspiration, wrote the music, and sang the lead vocals. Here’s what David Dodd wrote about the tune in “The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics,” also found on the Grateful Dead’s website:

When he (Phil Lesh) was a youngster of only 29 or 30, he and Robert Hunter collaborated to write “Box of Rain.” It was a song written to and for his father, who at the time was in his final days. Lesh was driving out to the Livermore Valley on a regular basis, and this song came to be during those drives.

I included a YouTube clip of the song, followed by Hunter’s lyrics in full. I hope you’ll give it a listen and follow along with the lines below, as the song’s words speak for themselves and are instrumental for this post.

Look out of any window
Any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
Birds are winging or rain is falling from a heavy sky

What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
For this is all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long ago

Walk out of any doorway
Feel your way, feel your way like the day before
Maybe you’ll find direction
Around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you

What do you want me to do
To watch for you while you’re sleeping?
Then please don’t be surprised
When you find me dreaming too

Look into any eyes you find by you
You can see clear through to another day
Maybe it’s been seen before through other eyes
On other days while going home

What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
It’s all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long ago

Walk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams to another land
Maybe you’re tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken
And thoughts unclear

What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain
And love will see you through

Just a box of rain, wind and water
Believe it if you need it
If you don’t, just pass it on
Sun and shower, wind and rain
In and out the window
Like a moth before a flame

And it’s just a box of rain
I don’t know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
Or leave it if you dare

And it’s just a box of rain
Or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long, long time to be gone
And a short time to be there

–Robert Hunter and Philip Lesh

It’s a beautiful and melodic song that tells the heartbreaking tale of a son sitting at his dying father’s side, asking how he can help and doing what he can to ease his dad’s pain, which he realizes isn’t much. The speaker recognizes that his father is “tired and broken,” that his “tongue is twisted with words half spoken and thoughts unclear.”

As my father rapidly declined, I could relate.

What, you might ask, is a box of rain? Hunter was notorious for not explaining the meaning of his words, first saying only that it worked better lyrically than a ball of rain and later stating, somewhat cryptically, that the phrase represented “the world we live on.”

There’s something poetic about not knowing the author’s full intent—like all good art, it’s up for our interpretation—just as there was something poetic about hearing Dead & Company play it that night in Boulder.

It was as if the band could sense my pain up there in the bleachers, so far away yet somehow connected in spirit, and wanted to guide me, assure me that love would see us through the hardship and sorrow that was sure to come.

Indeed, something otherworldly was going on because Dead & Company wasn’t planning to play “Box of Rain” that night.

But the universe apparently had a plan to ensure the song’s message captured me and held me tight.

The reason Dead & Company performed “Box of Rain” that July night in Boulder came from the heavens—quite literally. That’s because a light rain began falling as the concert kicked off.

Then, just two songs in, that light rain turned into a massive hailstorm. The band scurried offstage while Sandy and I—along with 50,000 other soaking wet fans who were packed into Folsom Field—scrambled for cover in the stadium’s crowded concourses.

After an 80-minute delay, the band walked back on stage as cloudy but rain-free skies appeared over the Colorado Front Range.

A quick but important note about the Grateful Dead and their legacy before proceeding: The band was renowned for playing different sequences of their vast catalog each night—in more than 2,300 shows over their 30-year career, they never played the same setlist more than once. Every show was unique.

Part of that vibe was letting the mood of the evening or the whim of a band member dictate what to play next. Dead & Company followed in that tradition. 

To honor the storm that had disrupted the Boulder show, Dead & Company sprinkled in several songs from their canon with “rain” themes.

They played “Cold Rain & Snow” (“run me out in the cold rain and snow”).

They played “Bertha” (“ran into a rainstorm, I ducked back into a bar door”).

They played “I Know You Rider” (“I’d shine my light through the cool Colorado rain”). A clip of that fabulous, crowd-pleasing line is below:

Fans were overjoyed at the rain references throughout the night, as were we, but it was another rain-themed song they chose to play that overwhelmed me.

I’m sure you can guess by now.

When I heard the first few notes of “Box of Rain”—a song I hadn’t thought about in recent months, despite the parallels to my father’s situation—I was immediately overcome with emotion and began tearing up as I sang along. It hit me that hearing this song, in some mystical and spiritual way, was meant to be.

With this serendipitous encounter, “Box of Rain,” which I had been a fan of for decades, suddenly took on new meaning. 

And it would for the next four months, guiding me along the way as I dealt with my Dad’s declining health during subsequent visits back to see him and in the solitary sadness of knowing he would soon be departing.

The song was with me right up to the early morning of November 6, 2019.

On that fateful autumn day, I was at my Dad’s bedside. He was in hospice care, confined to a hospital bed placed in his living room. I had flown to Memphis a week earlier—my sixth trip back in seven months—and had been with him ever since, along with my uncle Bill (my Dad’s younger brother) and his wife, Kim.

I’m not sure how much my Dad was tracking in those final days as he floated in and out of consciousness—one moment in this world, one moment in the next, perhaps unsure where he’d rather be—but I was happy to be with him, to watch for him while he was sleeping.

I’m also happy the important people in his life—including Sandy and my sister, Julie, her husband, Ben, and their two daughters, Emma and Ellen—were able to see our Dad, father-in-law, and “Pops” before he moved on to the next world.

The night of Nov. 5 into Nov. 6, however—my Dad’s last few hours on Earth—the house was quiet. Bill, Kim, and I held a vigil of sorts and did our best to keep Dad comfortable. Since we weren’t sure when he’d draw his last breath, we took shifts so someone would always be with him while others tried to sleep.

Around 4 a.m., Bill awakened me for my next shift. I knew the time was near, so to honor these final moments with my father, I pulled out my phone and opened Apple Music. I scrolled to “Box of Rain,” hit “play,” and set the phone’s player to “Repeat 1.”

As the song played over and over, perhaps 10 or 12 or even 20 times, I held his hand, thanked him for everything, and told him it was OK to leave. And I whispered the words of the song that had been in constant rotation the previous four months.

What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain
And love will see you through

Around 7 a.m., Philip Lee “Phil” Smith slipped away, just as splintered sunlight made its way through his condo’s curtains onto his face.

In that moment, I realized how “Box of Rain” guided me through those final hours. It comforted me as I tried to comfort him. Love saw him through. Saw us through.

I also realized, once more, how fate has a way of bringing things into a person’s life at precisely the right time. I’m thankful this song that I’ve loved for a long, long time found me again through a seemingly random (but not random at all) song selection at a rain-delayed concert.

Its words helped me reflect on the good times my Dad and I shared over the decades, what he meant and continues to mean to me, and how I, along with other family members, could be there with him for the end of his life’s journey.

For that, I’m forever a fan of “Box of Rain,” which gave me the words—and the wisdom—I needed to say goodbye to my father and usher him to another land.