Happy Birthday, Jarnney.
#20 I Grieve – Peter Gabriel 1998/2002
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It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
Is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on
One moment, I was planning to spend Christmas with him, and the next minute, the Food Guy was telling me, “There’s been an accident.” Life floats on such fragile wings.
Peter Garbriel released “I Grieve” on his 2002 album Up, but it had also been included on the City of Angels soundtrack (from the movie with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage – a nice chick flick) and performed once or twice before its appearance on Up.
The news that truly shocks
Is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
It's empty, empty cage
And I can't handle this
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on and on and on
“You leave – me” goes the line. The pause before “me” is painful. His absence in the world affects many people, but in the end, it feels personal.
Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
It seems so cruel how life goes on when all you want is everything to stop, as in W. H. Auden’s poem, “Funeral Blues.” “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone/Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone…Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.”
I once had a student in a composition class who wasn’t doing very well. It was soon after John’s death, so I warned my classes I might break down for apparently no reason. I sometimes did. He sought me out after class one day, early in the semester, and revealed that his grandmother who had raised him had just been diagnosed with cancer. He had some other problems he was dealing with. And he asked me, “How do you do this every day? How do you go on?” I told him that I tell myself people depended on me, like him. That I had responsibilities, things that only I could do. You just do it – one foot in front of the other. It seemed to help. He performed better in my class anyway.
Did I dream this belief
Or did I believe this dream?
Now I will find relief
I grieve
There is some relief in dealing with day-to-day necessities. It doesn’t mean that you don’t think like Auden, “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood./For nothing now can ever come to any good.” But life carries on.
And I grieve. Happy birthday, Jarnney.
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