What Sarah Said

When the Death Cab for Cutie album 'Plans' was released, I listened to one track on repeat. The first time I heard it, I was utterly unnerved. It seemed too overwhelming to think that everything I'd thought and felt about the most difficult thing I've ever been through could have been captured in someone else's words. But it had been. Perhaps it wasn't just the words, but more the attachment of those words to a name. Her name. I'm not sure I'd said it, outloud, just her name, since it happened.

Death is a funny thing. Grief even funnier. In the span of just a few days you go from knowing how your world exists, and who's in it, to having no idea how to put one foot in front of the other. No idea how to make yourself presentable. No idea how to re-remember all your history without someone so you don't have to feel that emptiness over and over again. No idea how to respond to "I'm so sorry for your loss." No idea how the rest of the world just...moves on...when yours has stopped.

And it's never real while it's happening, losing someone. It can't be. If it were, we wouldn't be able to take it. So we stare at our feet, stare out the window, stare at the nametag on the Doctor's white coat as he speaks, stare anywhere but the eyes of another human being.

I don't believe I've engaged with all this, really, since it happened. And the news of Natasha Richardson's death brought it all flooding to the surface. Perhaps I'm just writing this down for myself. Perhaps someone will read it and it will make just one moment a little easier for them, a moment that for me was devastating, crippling. The truth is, the very best we can hope for in life is a set of people to share it with who make us laugh, love, and live for the moment. Second to that, we have to make all our plans with the understanding that each one which comes to fruition is a gift, and not something we own.

Lyrics to 'What Sarah Said' below.



What Sarah Said

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

So who's gonna watch you die?