Brad Wolfe has long intertwined music, healing and community, through a concentrated stream of philanthropic and creative efforts, bringing together support, hope, and creativity, in order to encourage genuine, honest conversations, focused on moving forward after loss. When Wolfe was confronted by the inevitability of mortality, highlighted in the stories of his loved ones, he kept coming back to the same question: “Why do we wait for a crisis to start living the way we want to, especially given the preciousness of life in the face of death?” Sweeping this feeling into his lifelong drive to help others, he transformed it into “Reimagine”, a national movement that has so far helped more than 250,000 people across the US, through in-person and virtual events.
The responsibility of turning grief into beauty constantly guides Brad Wolfe’s songwriting, and the latest addition to his ever-expanding ‘Loss, Life & Love’ Mixtapes project, the single, ‘Cover You In Flowers’, sees him enter the second stage of ‘Vol 1: Loss’. Building up on the success of the inaugural gathering celebrating his previous single “Why Wait,” which saw over 1,000 registrants, and introduced the organisation’s new interactive social platform for transforming pain into purpose, ‘Cover You in Flowers’ opened the next pathway in Reimagine’s Loss event series, which took place virtually on the 21st of May. The platform continues to grow and forge community, giving hurting people a place where grief is not simply something to move past, but something to move through, one step at a time.
Joining Reimagine after the death of her mother, Grace Livingston found support that saw her become more deeply involved with the organisation. When she was herself diagnosed with terminal cancer, aged only 32, she was therefore able to meet it with an entirely new perspective, and remained an active voice in the community, speaking openly, and refreshingly honestly, about mortality. Despite her diagnosis, Grace married her fiancé Ben, declaring that they would face the road ahead together. Speaking of ‘Cover You In Flowers’, Brad Wolfe says, “I wrote this song to honor her spirit, her wish, and the bond she shared with Ben”. Playing guitar by Grace’s bedside in her final hours, he says he was deeply moved by the palpable feeling of peace that filled the room. He adds, “Some experiences stay with you forever. Watching the way she and Ben faced all of this with so much tenderness changed me”.
Stripped back to its bare bones, the folk and Americana influences of Brad Wolfe’s sound is filled with a raw sincerity, with light acoustics, gentle tambourine shakes, and feathery vocals, allowing listeners to sit with the complexities of permanence and impermanence, as seen through the eyes of someone in the middle of the storm, with all the precarious questions and passionate convictions of someone about to lose the person closest to their heart. Ben embraced intimacy and acceptance even as Grace’s health degraded, allowing him to be fully present for her when she needed him most. As Wolfe sings, “I made a promise to love you till your last breath”, and “My words mattered; it was a promise”. Ben and Grace’s loved ones gave her the send-off she deserved, covering her body in flowers just after she passed, in a last, resounding act of devotion that said all those things they couldn’t express with words alone.
The music video for ‘Cover You In Flowers’ opens with a heartfelt dedication, distilling Grace’s mission in a single sentence – “Her wish was for people to talk more openly about death”. Wolfe documents Grace’s loving environment before, during, and after her passing, from the stirring photograph of her body blanketed with flowers to the blooming motifs woven through her photographs, home, and garden, the recurring imagery quietly suggests that death is anything but the end of a story. Artist and ritual guide Day Schildkrett is invited to craft a flower altar with Ben, just as Grace once did for her own mother, keeping her memory alive in everything she loved. Ben intentionally and methodically arranges her favourite flowers, plants, and petals into an intricate spiral, as a natural symbol of life’s impermanence. It’s a stirring and moving experience, showing that what remains is not absence, but presence.
Be moved by ‘Cover You In Flowers’ below, and find out more about Brad Wolfe and his music online through his official website.
