We’re getting older and older and older
and always a little further out of the way
You look into her eyes
and it’s more than your heart will allow
And August and everything after
you get a little less than you expected somehow. – “August and Everything After,” unreleased, Counting Crows

Since I’ve used this user name in various capacities over the years, I thought it might be appropriate to go ahead and get this out of the way. I came up with the name “everythingafter” years ago, and it comes from the Counting Crows’ 1993 album, “August and Everything After.” The album title is the name of a real Counting Crows song just released in a concert only a year or two ago – the lyrics of which are published (in fragments) in a handwritten type on the cover of the album.

Many, many people know this album, so that’s probably all I need to explain. I will also note that this band has helped me get through many difficult times in my life, when I have questioned myself, my life, my faith, everything. It’s poetic imagery and heart-draining lyrics often cut me to the quick and made me numerous times nearly break down whilst singing out loud, in my car, alone, to “Anna Begins” or “Time and Time Again” or “Sullivan Street.”

The key line in the song is “In August and everything after, I’m after everything,” and to me, the song is about having all these expectations from love and life and then realizing that few, if any of them, are actually coming to fruition.

All of the sudden she disappears
Just yesterday she was here
Somebody tell me if I am sleeping
Someone should be with me here
(cause I don’t wanna be alone) - “Catapult,” “Recovering the Satellites,” Counting Crows

During my school years, I was nuts about girls. I was also shy and insecure in my abilities to talk to them. As a result, every year, August was the time that we all went back to school. This meant for me new opportunities to at long last muster up the courage to talk to someone new. This, of course, never happened in high school or college, and this album embodies that disappointment for me, and probably explains why I relate to so many lyrics from that album, and others, from the band.

But “everythingafter” has another meaning for me. It’s about everything that comes AFTER we are done with this life. My grandmother recently succumbed to a long battle with various ailments, particularly Alzheimer’s. She now knows for sure what we on this side of the everafter don’t know for 100 percent fact. She either knows nothing and ceased to exist on that fateful Mother’s Day when she breathed her last. Or, she knows about everlasting life. We may think we know about the afterlife, and believe with all our being that something - in the Christian tradition, that would be heaven and hell – exists after this life, but until we get there, we certainly aren’t God, and our knowledge is limited to our own environs. So in that, this user name entails the knowns and the unknowns of what happens after this physical life is over. In essense, it entails what happens in august and everything after And everything that happens after “everything.”

 With that, I begin.