Rant #2,557: Willow Weep For Me

Today is my father in law’s memorial service at the cemetery,  something I am not really looking forward to.
 
But it will provide closure to the family, so I guess I am looking forward to it in a weird type of way.
 
Honestly, I shouldn’t even be writing this column today; I should have taken the day off.
 
But as I have said many, many times, writing kind of evens me out, it kind of gives me some kind of solace, it relaxes me, and it is something that I enjoy doing, so maybe today is the perfect day not to take off from doing this.
 
Whatever the case, I am here, and I have an entry to write, so what the heck, let me do it already.
 
We lost another one this weekend, when news trickled out that Chad Stuart of Chad and Jeremy fame passed away on Sunday.
 
The British duo, who rose to popularity during the Beatles-led British Invasion in the mid-1960s, had a number of charted singles and albums during their most prolific period, including “A Summer Song,” “Willow Weep For Me,” and “Before and After,” and their mellow tones permeated the Top 40 spectrum from 1964 to 1966.

 
Stuart, born in 1941, and his partner Jeremy Clyde were also actors, and in addition to appearing on all the top musical variety shows of the day, they were almost ubiquitous on other shows on American TV, including making appearances on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Patty Duke Show,” “Laredo” and “Batman” as a duo either under their own names or character names.
 
They also used their talents separately, with Stuart doing voice work on the film “The Jungle Book” and Clyde appearing on “My Three Sons.”

 
When the duo broke up, Stuart recorded with his then-wife Jill, but the duo was really an on again, off again thing for decades, with new recordings being made and concert dates as a duo cementing their popularity both here and overseas.
 
And yes, to this day, they get mixed up with another successful British duo from that time period, Peter and Gordon—made all the more funny because Peter Asher and Jeremy Clyde have actually performed in concert as a duo!
 
Chad Stuart will be missed, but his recordings live on.
 
Really, that is all I have to say today.
 
I didn’t sleep well last night, with a lot of things on my mind—most having nothing to do with my father in law’s passing—and I really did not have the patience to read the newspaper today as I normally do.
 
I am just not into it at all.
 
I do have things to do, I was very busy yesterday with my remote job and some other things, and I guess it made the day go by pretty quickly.
 
But today, my family and I have something else to do, and while no one is looking forward to it, as I mentioned earlier, it will give us all some closure.
 
Perhaps I am reliving what my family and I went through with my father just a few months ago, but it is funny in a way … it is not “déjà vu all over again,” it is something else entirely.
 
Or at least that is the way I am dealing with it all.
 
Maybe that’s the best way to handle it.