Hoping for a Taylor Swift Fix

I tried to buy Taylor Swift tickets for my kids to honor the 10th anniversary of their dad's death

Photo by Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash

When I woke up that morning and Joe wasn’t in bed beside me, I momentarily pondered his whereabouts. Most likely, he had fallen asleep in front of the TV, I mused. But it was also possible that he had gotten up with the kids, who at three and six, were still early risers. 

So before I roused myself fully, I began to lay out the day in my head: get two kids to school and two adults to work. First-grade parent potluck. Take Joe’s lasagne out of the freezer. Confirm with the teen sitter.

As it turned out, there would be no school, or work, or parent potluck for us, because that morning, November 15th, 2012, the kids and I discovered that their dad had died in his sleep. His death certificate would later list cardiac arrhythmia not-otherwise specified, something the Brooklyn Medical Examiner called, “An unsatisfying diagnosis of exclusion.” Subsequent consultations with cardiologists would point to a rare condition. But at the time, all we knew was that a man who only hours before had seemed the picture of health, was now inexplicably dead on our couch. 

After that first day, there came a second, then a third, and then many, many more days came and went, until in a trick of time, a decade had gone by.  

During those years, my mom also died. Plus, I found a new partner, had another baby, and my once impossibly small kids had grown into teenagers. Time certainly hadn’t stood still, but nevertheless, I marveled over its passage.

After Joe’s death, we would join his mom on the anniversary to light candles and toast his memory. Her apartment had only been two subway stops from us, and she was an everyday part of our lives. But she had left Brooklyn during the pandemic and now lived in Massachusetts where she was dealing with a second round of cancer and was currently mid-chemo. So we weren’t meeting up this year. And in all honesty, the last few times we observed the date together, I was left unsettled, wondering how long we would continue the tradition and whether the day of someone’s death was really the best day for such a meet-up.

But a tenth anniversary felt different and like something we should mark, and I’d had an idea of how to do that.

On runs in my local park, I had begun to see more and more memorial trees. They looked newly planted and spindly. Each was surrounded by a low wire fence upon which hung a laminated photo or two next to a short bio. These were commemorations for beloved family members, pets, and teammates. That would be a good idea, I thought. Joe had loved this park, and since he had been cremated, I liked the thought of a tree as a physical place to visit. I imagined taking the kids there on the anniversary and FaceTiming in his family. But when I finally got around to purchasing one, it turned out all the fall plantings were already accounted for.

That was my only plan, and I’d flubbed it. 

Shortly before the anniversary, though, I saw that Taylor Swift was going on The Eras Tour. I knew my big kids, a 16-year-old Swiftie and a 13-year-old lover of all things pop music, would be thrilled to go. I learned that I could sign up to become a “verified fan” who, if selected, could get tickets before they went on sale to the general public. On November 14th, the text came. I was one of the lucky ones who got a code. I could buy tickets the next morning.

Perfect, I thought; that would be the anniversary. If the day felt heavy, I would have something celebratory for the kids. We’d meet up after school, call their grandma, and I’d give them the tickets over hot chocolate.

But things didn’t go quite as I had planned. For one thing, they balked at my idea. A cafe was way too public for that kind of call, they rightly pointed out. Distraught, I pushed back needlessly. Finally, we agreed to call from home. But the mood had darkened and the last thing I wanted was for them to head into the day feeling bad about our interaction. So I told them about the concert. “I was going to tell you after school,” I said. “I got pre-qualified to buy Taylor Swift tickets today!” 

They were suitably excited and I promised to text them at lunch to let them know where their seats were. “Please, please try to get them for Sunday,” my daughter said. She liked that opener a little better. Cheered, I told her I’d do my best.

A few hours later I got into the Ticketmaster queue and texted my daughter a screenshot showing that I only had 23 minutes left to go. But like millions of other people, it turned out that my 23 minutes would come and go and I would have nothing to show for it. Tickets in my basket disappeared. I got bumped out of the queue repeatedly. The website shut down. Switching to my phone didn’t help either. It was becoming increasingly clear that something which I thought would take no more than an hour was going to be a much longer process. As the minutes ticked by I began to panic. I had a middle school class to teach and was nowhere nearer to possessing Taylor Swift tickets than I had been when I started. 

The texts with my daughter from that day are a study in role reversal. As things started to go south, I wrote to her in all caps, “OMG I GOT BUMPED OUT OF THE QUEUE.”

She responded, “What? Oh, no,” followed by, “Maya says the same thing is happening to her. Please don’t be sad. It's really ok.” Then, when I wrote back, “I am so sorry. I really wanted to do this for you today,” she tried to reassure me. “I know. It’s going to be fine. Don’t be upset.”

But I was upset, and I had to teach. So I called my partner, who was working from home, and, holding back tears, I hurriedly tried to explain the situation: the presale, the tickets, the queue, and ultimately, the end goal of softening a day whose weight, I knew, could land in a range of ways.

He took my presale code, got online, and sat in the endless broken queue for the rest of the day only to come up as empty-handed as I had. (And after borrowing a friend’s credit card for another presale, he spent much of the next day in the queue, as well! That time-sucking labor of love was also a bust.).

When I saw the kids later, they continued to be reassuring. “It’s really okay, mom,” they told me. “Maybe we can find a resale that isn't a thousand dollars.” Still, I was devastated. Seeing the show would have been such a great experience for them. But I also knew that I was using the idea of the tickets as a salve for my guilt over failing to plan something significant.

When we called their grandmother, I told her about the failed tree purchase, and the Taylor Swift debacle. “Well, honey,” she said, “Joe would have liked both those things.” She showed us the candles she had just lit, and I showed her a photo of Joe playing softball that a friend of his had recently dug up. Then we pivoted to talking about school, and how she was feeling, and what we would do during our Thanksgiving visit the following week.

After we hung up, the kids went off to (Zoom) driver’s ed and (real-life) trombone practice. I pried my youngest off a screen and enlisted her help setting the table for dinner. We put on her mix and when a Taylor Swift song came on, I reminded myself that while tickets would have felt special, and planting a tree would have been meaningful, neither was going to change the fact that now, a decade filled with life’s joys and sorrows and everyday banalities had really and truly passed.

Ellen Friedrichs is a health educator, writer, and mom of three. She is the author of the book, Good Sexual Citizenship. Originally from Vancouver, she now lives in New York. Find her on socials @ellenkatef.