Voices... and Your Own

I was listening Carol’s show this morning on WFMU, little sweetheart, and I heard something that kind of stopped me in my tracks. It was a song by a group I didn’t know, The Clogs. but the guest vocalist on it was Matt Berringer from The National. His voice is so embedded in my memories of you that it takes me to you instantly.

I remember discovering The National together, little sweetheart, getting that “Dark Was The Night” compilation at Easy Street Records when we were up in Seattle together for the reading of 7 Pages, then you sending me an mp3 of that song from Boxer with the line about “I waited for 29 years to find you”. You were 29 at the time and it seemed so very much about you and I finding one another, you saving my life, filling it with light and love.

I remember tears pouring down my cheeks when you spoke of your certainty that you would pass away before I and that you wanted me to speak at your funeral and to listen to our songs and remember you. It’s so very hard to hear those voices and songs that meant so much to us, little sweetheart, that music that came to be our own. It still cuts me to the core. But I do love you forever and with all my heart.

Please be with me today, little sweetheart. Let me know that you are near and strengthen my faith to know that I will be with you again, soon and forever. With all my love.