For some reason, I’m still upset by the February 17, 2013, suicide of Country Music star Mindy McCready.

I didn’t know Mindy personally. I had barely even heard of her before her suicide. I knew her as most everyone else did: by her mug shots and the barrage of sad media stories in the months leading up to her death.

According to her entry on Wikipedia,

Overall, McCready’s four studio albums accounted for twelve singles on the Billboard country singles charts. This figure includes the Number One hit “Guys Do It All the Time”, as well as the Top Ten hits “Ten Thousand Angels” and “A Girl’s Gotta Do (What a Girl’s Gotta Do)”. Although she had not charted a single since 2002, McCready received significant media coverage regarding her personal life. McCready’s fifth studio album, I’m Still Here, was released in March 2010.

Five studio albums? A Number One hit? Twelve singles? Another article stated she had sold over three million albums. So she was not someone without considerable talent. Or beauty. How did her life come to this?

Something about her life, and tragic death, has haunted me.

Part of it, I’m sure, is that her death reminded me of the suicide three years ago of Garry, a friend and former co-worker.

No doubt about it. Garry was a quirky guy, perhaps the quirkiest I’ve ever known. A short, skinny man with more in common with Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character (or Mayberry’s Barney Fife) than ad legend David Ogilvy, whom he deeply admired, Garry had the kind of mind that could remember what happened on days stretching back to the 1950s…and he would tell you about them, in microscopic detail, each time you encountered him. He was 61, had never married, lived alone, and had been unemployed for two years.

Politics was his favorite topic, especially how we were all getting screwed by the people in Washington. Second favorite topic was how he got screwed by employers over the years. Third favorite topic was how he was getting screwed by the system, especially would-be employers who couldn’t see past his retro appearance and age to give him a chance to make a living.

Whenever my wife and I would run into him at a local book store (where he hung out often, just as we did), he would immediately launch into his repertoire of stories, virtually word for word, that we’d heard dozens of times in the 10 years we knew him. It was like he was a record player and the needle would drop down in the middle of a song. His conversations were like that, almost liked they picked up in the middle. He’d walk up to us and say, “I was talking to Bob at X-Y-Z company in 1984. It was Tuesday. June 23rd. It had been raining. But the sun had come out. We stood in the parking lot next to his light-blue BMW. He had just bought it. He told me the company where we’d worked for 14 years had just been bought out by…”

We’d listen to him, occasionally interject a word or two, and after 30-60 minutes had elapsed, chalk up another interesting visit with Garry.

He did have another favorite topic – music, especially the trumpet that he played (a Schilke B-Flat, if I recall correctly) and the Chicago Symphony or the Canadian Brass Quintet. He could (and did) tell us who was currently first principle chair, and what make and model of brass instrument the musician played, for any given year of the symphony or quintet.

Garry was convinced he faced a life of rejection and unemployment until the day he died. We knew he was sad and worried. So we’d politely listen to his stories. One time I told him, “You’re a great copywriter,” Garry. “One of the best. Hang in there. Something will turn up.” I looked him straight in the eyes as I said it. I wasn’t kidding. And I wanted him to know it. I wanted him to know I valued him as a person, and respected his gift for copywriting.

Still, no matter how often we’d listen to Garry’s stories, or tell him how much we appreciated his talent, he ended his life on June 9, 2010.

After Mindy McCready died, I spent time online reading about her. Also, I bought all five of her studio CDs, most of which were already out of print at the time of her passing (which I found sad), and I listened to them. Repeatedly. Perhaps I was still upset by my friend’s death. But I felt that I needed to get to know Mindy.

I discovered that Mindy’s life was one success after another, followed by one tragedy after another, some of which was self imposed, granted. But a lot of it wasn’t. I also discovered that she had a great voice, a lot of talent, her own style, and a career that was far from over — despite what the media wanted us (and her) to believe.

The last month of her life, starting on January 13, 2013, reads like something from a horror novel. The timeline of events would push any rational person close to the edge. Someone already teetering on the brink didn’t stand a chance.

On January 13, her “soulmate” (David Wilson) was found dead from a gunshot wound. On February 6, Mindy was committed to a treatment facility for a mental-health and alcohol abuse evaluation, her sons were removed from her care. She was released on February 8. But her kids were not returned.

On February 16, she gave an interview in which she talked about discovering David on the front porch of their home. She said,

“He was lying on the ground with his brains all over the floor. And then I held him and I kissed him and I told him I forgave him. And I said, ‘David, none of this means anything. You didn’t have to do this. Please, don’t die. Please. We love you so much. Please don’t die.”

Twenty-four hours later, on February 17, 2013, Mindy took her own life.

One report quotes Mindy’s father, Tim, who said that after David’s suicide, “[Mindy was] not bathing or even helping take care of her two children.” According to the article, “He also added that she remained in bed for three weeks while mixing alcohol and prescription pills after the loss.”

As I listened to her CDs on my iPod (the aforementioned five studio albums, plus a Greatest Hits album called Platinum & Gold Collection – 67 tracks in all), I read fan reviews of her albums on Amazon, some of which said she really wanted to do more serious music and sought to get away from her sexpot image that the record labels encouraged her to adopt.

In addition to listening and reading…and doing a lot of pondering…I watched video clips of Mindy’s songs. Like this one, for “Guys Do It All the Time”:

Or this one, for “Ten Thousand Angels”:

In the end, I came away with the realization that Mindy McCready was an incredibly talented, deep-feeling, but emotionally troubled woman whose life, to me, resembled Marilyn Monroe’s.

Both young women were used and abused by men, exploited, and then kept at arm’s length when their emotional worlds fell apart. Marilyn died at the age of 36. Mindy, at 37. Both were accomplished, talented and beautiful. Both seemed to have so much to live for. Sadly, they didn’t see it that way.

Shortly before her death, Mindy recorded a song (produced by her boyfriend David Wilson) called “I’ll See You Yesterday” that — in retrospect — appears to have been her suicide note. This song’s video clip was created as a tribute to David, as well as a message for people considering suicide. (At the end of the video, there’s information about Suicide Is Preventable.)

You can watch the heartbreaking video/song here.

You can read the lyrics here:

If we’re really telling the truth
things don’t look the way that they use to
these conversations long overdue
cause I can’t look it through
cause we’re all I knew

I was your sunlight, but now I’m just a shade
I was your blue sky, Now I’m just the rain
I was your favorite song, but Now I’m overplayed
If tomorrow’s gonna be the same
I’ll see you yesterday.
I’ll see you yesterday.

Let’s get lost in our memories
That’s the safest place we can be
If this is the end of our story,
I don’t wanna read it, I just wanna keep it well.

I was your sunlight, but Now I’m just a shade
I was your blue sky, Now I’m just the rain
I was your favorite song, but Now I’m overplayed
If tomorrow’s gonna be the same
I’ll see you yesterday

I’ll see you in my dreams
and in every single moment you miss something to me
just like the photographs
I’d keep the very best
cause baby that’s the way I will remember it

I was your sunlight, Now I’m just a shade
I was your blue sky, Now I’m just the rain
I was your favorite song, Now I’m overplayed
If tomorrow’s gonna be the same
they said tomorrow’s gonna be the same
I’ll see you yesterday.
I’ll see you yesterday.

What does Mindy McCready have to do with The Only Love Project? Plenty.

Consider the chilling words (Meditation 17 from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions) of John Donne, the 15th century English poet:

No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Mindy’s death diminished me. So did Garry’s.

One of the articles written after Mindy died was titled “Mindy McCready’s life started with so much promise”

True. But whose doesn’t? Don’t we all begin the same way? Doesn’t each of us have “promise”?

To me, that’s not the tragedy here. Yes, Mindy McCready had “promise.” But bemoaning what might have been is the trap that, I believe, is at the heart of what drives people to utter despair. And suicide. For Mindy, it was grieving the death of her boyfriend. The loss of her kids. Her substance abuse problems. Her seemingly lost career. What she used to be. What was.

What was.

What…was.

What Mindy didn’t realize is that she had right now. She had this moment. In this moment, she had all she needed to survive. She was beautiful. She could still sing like crazy. She had friends and family. Above all that, she appears to have been someone with the capacity to love like nobody’s business.

But she allowed what she didn’t have overshadow what she did have.

Love is never about what might have been. Or even what will be.

Love is present tense.

It is an embrace. It is paying the rent for someone struggling. It is providing food. It is offering a place to sleep. It is slipping a heartfelt greeting card into someone’s lunch bag. It is pushing a car out of a snow drift. It is saying, “I love you.”

Love is.

This is why The Only Love Project is not about what’s happening in the Middle East. Or in Africa. Or in Boston. Or even in the city next to where I sit right now. The Only Love Project begins with where I’m sitting as I type this…and it extends to those in closest proximity to me. Love begins right here, right now, with me.

I would hate to be a movie or music star. It must suck to rely on the media to tell me that I am hot…or that I am not. That I was once full of “promise” but that I am now riddled with substance-abuse problems, and that my career was over. I would hate for the media to plaster my mug shot all over the world, as Mindy’s was.

Everything about our world is designed to take us out of the moment, to keep us from realizing that we are all, in this moment, perfect. We are alive. We are loved. Or we have the capacity to love. We are not deeply flawed, has beens, or people whose careers are washed up.

We may not have all of our limbs. Or teeth. Or eyesight. We may not have our health — or our looks — as we did when we were 19. Our “best” days may be far behind us.

Be we have enough to be perfect just as we are. In this day.

The minute we live outside of this moment, we fall susceptible to life’s vicissitudes, the familiar hoards that always seek to storm our gates: worry…fear…self doubt…hopelessness…and despair.

There are some who look at Mindy McCready’s life and have no sympathy, empathy, or compassion for her. They cannot understand why she would kill herself, leaving behind her two kids, her family, her friends, and a world of fans. That’s neither here nor there.

What’s important is that we may never know, at any given moment, if we stand next to a Mindy McCready. Or a Garry. We don’t always know what’s going on inside our friends, or family members. Or ourselves.

Let’s not wait for tragedy to strike for us, as common humanity, to be diminished by the loss of another life.

Let’s be love in the lives of others. Today.