My Favorite Song-A Reflection

This post is not directly related to chronic illness but it is a reflection on grief which I believe is intimately connected with the chronic illness experience. The format for this comes from a podcast by John Green called The Anthropocene Reviewed. You can listen to it where ever you get your podcasts from.

My favorite song is Every New Day by Five Iron Frenzy. It came out in the fall of 1998 and by 1999 everyone in my house growing up was listening to it. I was ten at the time and most of my musical choices were either influenced or directly dictated by my older sister. She was eighteen and so hip! These are my most poignant memories of Every New Day.

I’m ten years old. My sister has brought home the new Five Iron Frenzy cd and we all love it. When Every New Day comes on my sister, two brothers, and I can’t help but blast it on the stereo and dance around the house. Our parents tolerate this, so long as it is not before 8am on a weekend.

I’m a week shy of eleven years old. My brother Joe died suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s the first time in my young life that I truly understand that death can come for anyone of any age. My sense of safety, that the world is a good place, is shattered. I sit in an unfamiliar church in the front row with Joe’s casket just a few feet away and listen to Every New Day playing on a boombox. It’s upbeat tempo and horns are a stark contrast to the setting but the words fit the moment so well. I think back to a few days earlier at the hospital when my sister sang these words into my brother’s ear just moments after he had died. It’s a prayer. “Here’s my heart, let it be forever yours.” Back in the church pew it feels very intimate to be sharing this song with hundreds of people but they all loved him too. I figure some of them might need this prayer.

I’m a teenager and I’m learning how to live with depression. I listen to Every New Day a lot. “When I was young...I had wings and dreams could soar. I just don’t feel like flying anymore.” I think those were written as the words of a burnt out middle aged man but they speak to my heart as well. At that point I hadn’t yet blocked out my first decade of life. I had been so happy, so secure, before tragedy struck our family. Now as a teenager I am searching for some inner stability and in some ways I find it in depression which is, if nothing else, consistent.

I’m twenty and deciding on my second tattoo. I end up using the lyrics, “Here’s my heart, let it be forever yours.” We put those words on the back of Joe’s tombstone. By this time I had moved away from home, which meant I had left the monuments of Joe behind. No cemetery to visit, no plaques at school that I walk past every day, no town where everyone knew him. In some ways this is good for me. I am forced to think of other things, to build a new life. But I need some kind of monument, so I tattoo those words on my left forearm.

I’m thirty and listening to a podcast. Something in it reminds me of Every New Day so i play it on my phone while I’m cooking dinner. Later I walk into the living room and hear my husband singing it under his breath. My heart feels warm. I think of how this song has been a part of my life for twenty years now, through the darkest times and now in one of the happiest times.