It seems like the loss of loved ones has been a common topic among some of the blogs I read recently.

Both The Chronicles of Rhodester and The Right Side Up posted very moving pieces recently about the deaths of their mothers, and I encourage you to read them both.

Reading these things has made me want to write something about the experience of losing someone you love. It’s been on my mind lately. Nonetheless, when I try to put some words together, I realize that anything I write would just be a pale attempt to come up with something as moving as the two items I mentioned above. It would be insulting to them and it would make me look silly to just sort of jump on the bandwagon.

Still, it’s been on my mind.

I can’t help but want to post something.

Rather than concocting something in my own words and fall short, I decided to post someone else’s words, something that moves me a lot. These are the lyrics to a song that I love. This song makes me think about the people I’ve known who’ve left us behind, and the love that they left with us. When I listen to this song, I ponder the lives of the people who’ve left me and my family behind, having finished with this world and moved on to the next.

For my grandmother, my aunt Sadie, my childhood friend Bobby, my son’s maternal grandmother, my friend Leon, and my cousin Stephanie, I offer a prayer in someone else’s words:

There's no one in town I know.
You gave us some place to go.
I never said thank you for that.
I thought I might get one more chance.

What would you think of me now?
So lucky, so strong, so proud.
I never said thank you for that,
Now I'll never have a chance.

May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friend.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.

And if you were with me tonight,
I'd sing to you just one more time.
A song for a heart so big,
God couldn’t let it live.

May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friend.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.

-Jimmy Eat World
“Hear You Me”