Song Theory

Theory: Breakup songs can also be about someone dying

Really, they’re all about loss, aren’t they?

A few weeks after my mom died, I flew back to Colorado. A trip I’d already had planned, to see my favorite band play.

They played a song they rarely played live. One I’d been listening to a lot since my mom died. It seemed like it could just as easily be that the girl who was gone was gone forever was gone, not because she left her man, but because she died.

'Cause everybody knows she ain't coming back

The buttons on my clothes are as plain to see as that

The first few weeks after she died, I woke up every day and had to remind myself, My mom is dead. She’s actually dead.

After years and years of thinking she might die, she died. I wasn’t there. I didn’t get to hold her hand while she died. She died while I was across the country. And I woke up. And I got a phone call. And I never got to see my mom, to say goodbye, and I never will. It’s still hard to accept that after nearly three decades of defying death, she died.

It’s been a couple of years now, and that song still fits.

Thought I found myself a frequency beyond her voice

But the memories keep breaking through the noise

There are moments, where it feels like you move past grief (ha!), but then it comes crashing in with a memory, a reminder of something, a song, a fast food restaurant, the way my niece looks.