I was enjoying sleeping late on this Labor Day Weekend Saturday when I received a 3 word text message from one of my oldest and closest friends:

Sorry about Jimmy.

I had no idea what what Carlos was talking about, yet I immediately knew what he was talking about.

It has been no secret that Jimmy Buffett, our iconic Island-life deity had been sick and a canceled a few shows recently. Not front of mind, but enough concern that lately Dear Hubby and I have talked about making sure we drag our kids to a Buffett concert, despite all their I’m-too-cool-teenage-angst, so that one day when they are older, they could tell their children that they had seen Buffett at least once. But, as it often does, life got in the way.

So today, as the rest of the world sits and reflects on all the way that Jimmy affect this world, I, too, took a look at how utterly intertwined he was in my life.

And I’m grateful for it all.

No joke, I probably moved to Florida because of Jimmy Buffett, and sure as shit I learned to play guitar so that I could play Buffett songs (Volcano, in particular. And damn you, Barred F Chord! It took me YEARS to master.)

I’ve got tickets from 17 shows, dating back to 1993, but I have shirts that are from tours older than that. So, we can say 17 shows have *surviving* tickets. I’m guessing that’s about 50% of the ones I attended.

I’ve partied on the Cosmic Muffin. (IFKYK.)

Buffet was the last concert I attended in the 20th Century – West Palm Beach, December 1999.

I got married in Key West the same weekend as Meeting of the Minds (the annual Parrothead gathering. Really, this was actually a coincidence.) Someone told us that Buffett had come to town, so we actually left our own wedding reception and hopped on the stage at Casa Marina. He was not there, but – note to self – if you are wearing a wedding dress, you can pretty much do anything you want and people will cheer you on. That being said, we danced our way down Duval Street into Margaritaville, and led a conga line through the restaurant and sang with the band on stage.

My kids danced on that stage a few years later.

I was there when Jimmy bought naming rights to the Miami Dolphin stadium — and for a year it was LandShark Stadium. I was SUPER pregnant, and went to the private concert with my giant belly, and had it painted by the carnival painters. We were featured on Local 10 news — and Lane, who is now 15 years old — was known for years as “the kid from the belly.” (Anyone with a hookup to Local 10 in Miami — I would love to dig up that feature!)

After the naming, we dance on the field at halftime to the Buffett version of the Dolphins Fight Song. Silliness supreme.

I made quilts for the local Parrothead club to raffle off for charity. (And just to prove that the world truly is small, someone I did not know at the time bought one of those quilts. He had it out at a party at his house and I nearly fell over.)

And concerts. So many concerts.

And Parrothead events. So much being silly and doing good. Charity night. Parrothead nights with the Dolphins, Marlins, Panthers…

The stories.

But mostly, I’ve got the songs. Wisdom to help us through.

Wrinkles only go where smiles have been.

There’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

Growing older but not up.

I write what I know about, made up or true. These songs aren’t for me, they’re for you.

I am umbilically connected to the temperate zone. It brought me life, it brought me love. I never have outgrown. Brought me one too many nights along that Biscayne shore. And one too many mornings in the Grove drugstore.

Just another shitty day in paradise.

Breathe in, breathe out, move on.

And so, so many more. So on this shitty day in paradise, I’ll leave you with the words that usually get me through the tough times. Especially today.

But now I think about the good times
Down in the Caribbean sunshine
In my younger days I was so bad
Laughin’ about all the fun we had

I seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin’ different oceans meetin’ cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go ’round

So to answer my own question – what does a world without Jimmy Buffett look like? I would say it looks a lot like it does today: kinda sad it is over, but happy and grateful that he is so forever entwined into our conscience that he will never truly leave us.

Sail on, Jimmy. And thank for all the good times.