“There’s no grief without love,” writes Garreth Broke. Over the past few years, the pianist-composer has volunteered as a Trauerbegleiter, sitting with those who have lost loved ones and helping them to process their grief. Such a position requires great empathy, and has connected Broke with his own history of losses; one might posit that healing is taking place in the artist’s life as well. The first compositions to emerge from this experience were a series of elegies written for specific people. Now the album Life Through Loss takes the project to the next level.
The album accomplishes two goals at once. It is a reflection of life through loss, tracing the grieving process from its early stages to preliminary peace. Broke concentrates more on sadness than on shock, bargaining and anger, as popularized by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross; still, these emotions can be heard in passing; and the end is not quite acceptance, but the beginning of acceptance. At the same time, the collection seeks to encourage and uplift, using musical empathy as its base. The titles follow a clear trajectory, landing in the final piece on a whisper of hope.
This being said, the album is not particularly sad, despite the titles; instead, returning to Broke’s opening statement, it is more an album of love. “Just Another Day (Without You)” is resolute, an acknowledgment that the loved one is both gone and not-gone, while “What We Shared (Playing Amelie)” references a famous film while recalling – and perhaps replaying – the good times. The track is upbeat, whimsical and playful, like the character herself. When the first thought of a lost loved one is happy rather than sad, a corner has been turned, even if the next thought is sorrow.
So yes, there is “Never Enough Time.” This track seems to celebrate life more than mourn death; it serves as a prompt to all who are listening who still have loved ones. As if to personify the feeling, the piece itself is brief, ending at only 2:14. Did the track have enough time? Are we more glad that it existed, even for 2:14, than had it never existed at all? The mixed emotions produce a “Beautiful Ache,” this piece one of the slowest and most reflective, underlying the gratitude one might feel for a relationship, even after it has ended. The feeling is later revisited in “Bittersweet.”
“The Big Waves” serves both as a reflection of sorrow and as solace, a difficult feat to pull off. The tone brightens without hitting Bright, like the smallest tilt in the blinds, allowing a hint of light to shine through. In a mirror fashion, “Lifted” (which one would assume would be light and breezy) ends with a single low key and the album’s longest decay, injecting the honest warning that grief is not a straight line. “What Matters” begins with an increase in tempo (“Finally, I am recovering!”) only to fall back to the couch; but here the final note goes up instead of down, the closing note of “What Matters” repeated as the opening note of “Bittersweet.”
While acknowledging the up-and-down nature of grief, Broke also realizes that healthy grief has a trajectory over time. By ending on “Life Finds a Way,” the composer underlines the worth of the process and its potential to heal. Healing does not mean forgetting; nor does it mean moving past sorrow; instead, it implies the incorporation of the loss into the framework of a life. One can be happy again, at first for a moment, then for a minute, eventually for a day, thankful not only for the love that one has received, but for the love that one has been able to give. (Richard Allen)