Kevin Carlson: Blog

I lost my father to cancer in 1994 and I struggled for years to come to terms with the loss. I tried for a long time to write about this but kept crumpling up the lyrics and throwing them away. Nothing really seemed to capture both what I felt and how I felt about my relationship with my dad.

I began to notice that a lot of my lyrical attempts were focusing on my anger about the loss and weren't really helping me move past things. I tried to turn things around and focus on the great relationship we had and how close we became as his time drew nearer. December of 1993 was the last lucid month of his life and we had conversations about life, death, good times and bad times -- I had never felt closer to him. Two months later, he was gone.

I don't think that I'll ever really completely "get over" this. I'm not sure anyone that loses someone ever really moves beyond the memories of a great relationship and the desire to have that back once again. I tried to capture all of the conflicting emotions of joy, sadness, gratefulness, disappointment and angst about that experience in this song. I hope I did it justice.