Last week, I wrote about a gift card an old friend gave me for Christmas — and how I used part of it to get the CD of Don McLean's "American Pie" album.
I've been listening to that CD a lot. It was one of my mother's favorite albums when I was a child, and it brings back memories of that time in my life. But I've learned, as I have listened to it in recent days, that it has a lot to say to me at this time in my life.
I suppose this goes without saying, but there are things I understand now that I didn't understand when I was 10.
I got the album because I remember the title song and "Vincent," but I keep listening to it because of songs I have been rediscovering, songs I heard from time to time when I was a boy and my mother played the record from start to finish. She loved "American Pie" and "Vincent," and there were times when she would just play those songs. But sometimes she let the album play all the way through so hearing those other songs revives long dormant memories.
Songs like "Empty Chairs."
That song conjures up memories of things that hadn't yet happened in my life when I first heard it, but they are significant now. Mostly, I guess it reinforces how unprepared I have often been when things happened.
Like memories of my first real love and how crushed I was when she left me. It was something my teenage mind had not anticipated. I don't know why. But McLean captures the feeling in his refrain:
"And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you'd go
Until you did I never thought you would."
If time travel was possible, I would like to go back and try to explain that to her. I would try to tell her how shocked I was. Maybe it would help her to understand why I sometimes said and did things that hurt her.
I was trying to deal with my own hurt.
At the same time, "Empty Chairs" brings back memories of Mom in ways "American Pie" and "Vincent" never could. "American Pie" and "Vincent" remind me of her when I was growing up, but "Empty Chairs" gives me a perspective I didn't have when the album was new, I was a child and my mother was in the prime of her life.
I don't know why, but until the day my mother died, it never occurred to me that a time would come when she would be gone. It should have, I guess. I have many friends who have lost a parent; some of my friends have lost both parents. Even when they have lost a parent unexpectedly — as I did — they've all seemed to be better prepared than I was. And there's a part of "Empty Chairs" that reminds me of that time, when I felt like I had been caught flat–footed and unaware.
It isn't really a song about the loss of a parent. It's more a song of regret over the loss of a lover. But that wasn't part of my personal experience when I was a child and Mom brought the album home for the first time.
There is a part of "Empty Chairs" that always makes me think of Mom.
"Never thought the words you said were true
Never thought you said just what you meant
Never knew how much I needed you
Never thought you'd leave, until you went."
Those first two lines, in my mind, are an explanation for my reactions at times when she told me things. You know how kids can be. They look at their parents as prehistoric relics who have no clue how things operate in the real world.
Now, as an adult, I know she told me the truth and that she meant the things she said. I guess those lines from the song tap into my thoughts from when I was a child, when I perceived things differently than I do today.
There is another twist that I have encountered in this song — and more may yet emerge. It unleashes memories of other things from my childhood — the people (my grandparents, family friends, classmates) who are gone, the places (my hometown, the schools I have attended, the employers for whom I have worked) that have changed. It is not unusual for me to sit down in an evening, put on a CD and have memories from childhood to the present day dance through my mind.
They say that, as you are dying, you see your life before your very eyes. If that is true — and no one can tell me who lived long enough after the show began to inform any bystanders of it — it is likely to be a movie I have seen more than once. Sometimes this seems like the confirmation of something Mr. Leland said in "Citizen Kane." He said memory was "the greatest curse ever inflicted on the human race."
Maybe he was right. You could probably start quite a debate on that one observation. Well, that isn't my intention. It's a personal matter, I suppose, so let's leave it at that. But there is no getting around the fact that there are many times in life that are painful to recall. You can chalk that up to anything you like — ignorance, immaturity, inexperience. When you get right down to it, don't we all have things we would do differently if we could?
"Morning comes and morning goes with no regret
And evening brings the memories I can't forget
Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs."
We all have our regrets, whether it was the love that slipped through our fingers or the people and places we left behind. And it is also true — for most of us, I guess — that, even when we grow up, we still need our parents. And we miss them when they're gone.
I will always be grateful to Mom for the things she gave me, including my appreciation for the music of Don McLean. I will always miss her.
And I will always regret that the people who have come into my life after she left it never got to know her.
They'll never know what they missed.
