Mimi Parker passed away last week at age 55 after a private struggle with ovarian cancer, diagnosed during 2020, perhaps the weirdest year of all of our lives. She sang and played drums in the long-running post-rock cult band Low, which she formed with her partner Alan Sparhawk some 30 years ago and kept going through parenthood, the diminishing returns of a full-time indie music career, and a series of remarkable stylistic shifts that kept the band consistently relevant for a very long time.

In interviews, Parker and Sparhawk suggested that their spiritual commitments and low-key home life were a big part of their longevity. I don’t know about that, but on more than one occasion, I took some solace in the grounded spirituality and appreciation for life’s paradoxical beauty at the core of their icy, sometimes lovely, sometimes challenging music.

When you’ve been a fan of an artist for 30 years, a few memories will jump out:

• Seeing Low open for Swans in Chapel Hill and finding myself instantly enamored, not knowing quite what to make of them
• Hearing “Slide” on college radio for the first time with a rattling window unit blasting in my face as I experienced my first Georgia summer

• Seeing the band headline, after they’d developed a larger following, and watching their core fans aggressively shush members of the audience who wouldn’t shut the fuck up during their set
• Hiding for hours in a coffee shop as my first live-in relationship rapidly deteriorated, listening to “(That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace” on repeat

• Grinding through the late stages of my divorce and another COVID wave while obsessively listening to the band’s noisy, oblique, and utterly heartwrenching 2021 album HEY WHAT, which is just a hell of a note to go out on

There is one memory, however, that stands out the most.

It was the first weekend of Christmas break. I was barely hanging on in college thanks to my severe drinking problem. How bad was it? I had bailed myself out of jail the previous morning so that I could drive for four hours to my mom’s house without disrupting our fourteen-hour drive to New York the next day.

I grabbed a few CDs on the way out the door. One of them was Low’s Christmas album, a mix of standards and originals showcasing both the tunes and the drones that distinguished the band’s sound.

We drove in shifts as the weather got worse. My hungover stomach churned as sleet hit the windshield. I hadn’t mentioned the fresh legal issues I’d added to my thoroughly chaotic life, but the tension in the car was palpable. As we drove past Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, we hit a breaking point and lashed out at each other. It was my turn to drive, so I got to pick the music.

I put on Christmas, a record with some joyful moments and some austere ones but with a pervasive sense of warmth and beauty utterly free of irony. My mom and I quite unexpectedly warmed up to each other. The music somehow created a space of peace for us, which took some doing. That Low could share some of their domestic tranquility with us in this deeply shitty moment speaks to the deep, soothing power of the sincerity at the heart of their art, however they came by it.

RIP, Mimi. Your work has had a unique place in my life for most of it. I wish comfort and strength to the people who loved you, and I would have loved to hear what else you would have gotten up to artistically, as part of a project that in some ways was just hitting its stride. Thanks for “Cue the Strings.” Thanks for a lot of unforgettable moments, particularly when you managed to bring some calm to one of the most awkward road trips of my life. You will be missed.

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