A song I’ve re-recorded today. It’s been known by various names over the past 15 or so years. It is ambiguously about lost love but it’s more complicated than that. The motivation for the song was my daughter’s death but it absorbed other feelings and memories along the way.
The words, annotated:
In the years before your broke my heart I never thought that you could do it
So I never stopped to wonder if you would
[It never even crossed my mind that I could lose Erin. From when she was a baby I felt
connected to her and even though our relationship was difficult I couldn’t conceive of it being
over]
In the sunlight of that certainty I slowly fell asleep
knowing you were close beside me and that everything was good
[Ah, well, there’s a line in Carl Sandburgs poem “Little Word, Little White Bird” where he refers
to one “falling asleep in an afternoon sunfall” and waking up with their heart as “cold and dumb
as a polished stone”- It is this sleep of love forgotten that echoes in this line]
In the dream that came to visit in the time of which I speak
The storm of judgment raged across the land
[When Erin’s mom was having an affair- and I knew she was, she was gone all night much of
the time- I came across a stack of love letters from her “amour”… I slept with Erin on her little
bed…]
In a cold and barren desert we were among the only living
But we faced that road together and we walked it hand in hand
[I dreamed that she and I were survivors of some apocalyptic scenario- it underscored the way I
thought we were- that even if everything else were to go away we’d still be there]
I’m only here to tell you that it’s all right now
And that even though you took me from your will
Do you ever think about me, does it ever make you smile
Did you know I always loved you, do you know I love you still
[I wonder these things about everyone I’ve ever loved- do you?]
Even though I just assumed that you’ld be standing with me here
Still perhaps upon that desert we will gaze
I will surely be there with you, if there are survivors
I will take your hand in mine at the ending of all days
Weren’t we there when this world alive became
Do you recall the mountains rising up in praise
We’ll be there when the Lion calls the stars all home by name
We will be together at the ending of all days
[I read the Chronicles of Narnia to all my kids, starting with Erin- The first book describes how
Aslan, the great Lion, creates the world with his song, in the final book in the series Aslan calls
the stars from the sky, naming each one, and leads the heroes of the various stories on a race
through the layers of existence, to the core of reality, of which the “real” world is just a
shadow…the last part is sung several times in the style of something you’d hear at a tent revival]
Here’s the song:
Here are some cute sleepy kittens-
moon soup 