You’ll hold my hand
Until I’m dead
If you die first
I’ll be alone
But until then
I’ll have a home
Last night I had a dream
That I’d lost my mind
I woke up in a panic
Of overwhelming fright
I realized how close we are
To madness and despair
The truth of my own weakness
Was more than I could bear
But then I saw you next to me
When I turned on the light
I reached for you
And in your sleep you held me tight
I still have you
You’re in my bed
You’ll hold my hand
Until I’m dead
If you die first
I’ll be alone
But until then
I’ll have a home
Today you were so miserable
And anxious all day long
It’s been that kind of week
Where everything goes wrong
You don’t deserve the things
That have been happening to you
I wanna make them go away
But what can I do?
I try to cheer you up
But I can’t fix anything
Life is what it is
All I can do is sing
You still have me
I’m in your bed
I’ll hold your hand
Until you’re dead
If I die first
You’ll be alone
But until then
You’ll have a home
You’ll have a home
So of course, a year later Henry dumped me. It was one of those awful things where you sense the person pulling away, so you cling on even more desperately, and it goes on for way too long, and it’s horrible, and eventually he had to pull the plug.
On the day that he moved out, I told him that I couldn’t stand to see him move out all his things, so I was going to a friend’s house. But before I left, I made him promise that he would rearrange all of the furniture before he left so that there wouldn’t be these big gaps where all of his things used to be, because it would just be too painful for me to have to walk in and see that. So Henry promised that he would do this for me, and I went to my friend’s house. When I came back later that night, I opened the door and saw that Henry had rearranged everything perfectly—he had even dusted so that there weren’t any marks where any of his things used to be.
The only problem was that he had had this giant wide-screen television that had been the focal point of our living room, and obviously he had taken it with him because it was his. And on this big table where the television used to be, he had put a doily and two candlesticks.
And I saw that and just burst into tears. And I ran into the bedroom and saw that half the books were missing from the shelves. And that’s when it hit me: now I live here alone.
COMFORT FOR THE LONELY
The only words of comfort for the lonely
The very words that they will never hear
The only words of comfort for the lonely
The very words that they will never hear
(Instrumental Break)
The only words of comfort for the lonely
The very words that they will never hear
The only words of comfort for the lonely
The very words that they will never hear
(Instrumental Break)
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’ll be right there
(Instrumental Break)
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’ll be right there
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’m coming over now
I’ll be right there
I’ll be right there
About a year ago, I went back home for a younger cousin’s wedding, and while I was at home, I found my first white hair. Now, I had never been a person who worried at all about getting older or losing my looks—I just never thought about that stuff. So it all just kind of hit me in this one moment, and I had this major over-reaction.
I realized that if my whole life had been an upward climb through learning how to walk and talk and read and get better at things and stronger, that I had reached the point in my life where everything from here on out was going to be a downward decline towards deterioration and sickness and death. And this had never occurred to me before, so I was really traumatized.
I remember going into my mother’s bedroom and showing her the white hair, and I told her that I was freaking out. And she told me a story about something her grandmother once said to her. So, in this next song, I’m gonna be doing my first and only impersonation of the evening, and it’s gonna be a double impersonation: I’ll be doing an impersonation of my mother’s impersonation of her grandmother.
WHEN YOU GET OLD
My mother’s mother lived to be a hundred
She died when I was just a little child
Before she passed she called me to her deathbed
She pulled me close, and this is what she said,
“When you get old
You will lose your mind!
And everything will hurt all the time!
Uh-huh
Uh-huh”
I cried and started calling for my mother
My mother’s mother gripped me with her claw
She said, “Be quiet child and stop your fussing
There’s something more:
When you get old
All your friends will die!
And you will be a burden to the world!
Uh-huh
Uh-huh”
(Instrumental Break)
My mother’s mother held me to her bosom
She smoothed my hair and spoke into my ear,
“Getting old has been for me a blessing
Now I face death with little fear
If we got old
And we were strong and healthy
We wouldn’t wanna die!
Oh no!
If we got old
And didn’t feel like dying
We wouldn’t wanna go!
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh”
My father was a very healthy person. He ate healthy, he exercised, he never smoked a day in his life. And when he turned sixty, he was diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer and told that he had a year and a half left to live. Because he was so healthy, he managed to survive chemo for three years. He worked the whole time, he never complained, he was amazing.
So one day, my dad goes to the doctor, and the doctor says that there’s a clinical trial for a new miracle drug for lung cancer patients. And this drug is so crazily effective that, in some people, they see a shrinkage in their cancer the very next day after taking the drug. The only catch is that the drug is only effective in the less than two percent of the population that have this really rare genetic mutation. But if you’re one of those two percent, the drug can save your life.
The clinic where the trial was being held was about a six-hour drive from where my parents lived, and my father wasn’t in great shape to travel, but they made the trip, and he went through two days of intensive testing to see if he had the genetic mutation. And after he did the tests, they came back home and waited for a month for the results. And they were kind of worried the whole time that even if the results came back positive and my father was eligible, that he’d be too sick to make the trip back to the clinic for the trial.
But finally, the phone call came and, unbelievably, my dad was one of the two percent—he had the genetic mutation. And he was just well enough to travel. So my parents made the trip back to the clinic, an
d when they got there, the nurse looked really upset. And she said, “I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake.”
And my parents started freaking out, and she said, “No, no, you have the genetic mutation—you’re totally eligible for the trial. The only problem is that one of the blood samples we took was too small. So unless we retake the sample and wait another month for the results, we’re not gonna be able to use your results in the trial, and therefore cannot release the medication.” My parents asked to speak to the doctor, and they explained to him that they couldn’t wait a month because my father probably wouldn’t live that long, so could he please just give them the medication to save my father’s life. And the doctor felt really bad and said, “I wish I could, but I’d lose my license. But what I can do is try to put a rush on the blood sample, and hopefully it will come back sooner than a month and you’ll be able to take the medication.”
So my parents checked into a hotel and waited. And while they were there, my father’s condition continued to decline to the point where he couldn’t breathe at all lying on his back, not even with an oxygen tank. So he would sit awake all night struggling to breathe, and eventually it got so bad that he had to go to the hospital and get a tube put down his throat so that he could breathe.
And that was the day that I showed up. My family was exhausted, so I took over for them at the hospital, and I remember my father was communicating by writing on a pad. And we worked out this system of hand signals that he would use to communicate with me so that I could tell the nurses what he wanted.
That night, I was sleeping on a cot in his hospital room, and suddenly all the alarms started going off, the lights came on, the nurses came running into the room. And I got up and saw my father sitting upright in the bed. His arms were tied to the bed, and he just had this look on his face of such terror. Like, I have never seen a more horrible expression. It reminded me of something out of one of those Renaissance paintings of Hell. And he was just freaking out, and he was doing everything in his power to get that tube out of his throat. And it took three nurses and me to restrain him so that they could sedate him again.
After that happened, I turned to the nurses and said, “What the hell was that?” My father was the calmest person, he would just never do that. And the nurses explained to me that sometimes when you give patients sedation, when they wake up, they have no idea who they are or where they are. All they know is that they’re strapped to this scary bed with this horrible thing going down their throat, and they panic. And she said, “Don’t worry, it’s totally normal.”
So this happened like five or six times over the course of the night, and I was getting so mad at the nurses. I was like, “Just give him enough sedation so that he doesn’t wake up and this doesn’t keep happening to him!” And they felt terrible and said, “We wish we could, but if we give him that much, we’ll kill him. We’re trying to do this very delicate balancing act.”
And then an even more horrible thought occurred to me, which was: what if it’s not even the case that he doesn’t know who he is? What if he is conscious, and he’s trying desperately to communicate something, and that’s why he wants the tube out of his throat? So I told this to the nurses, and they said, “Even if that’s the case, if we take the tube out, he’ll die. So there’s really nothing we can do.” And this kept going on all night.
The next morning, the blood sample came back confirming my father as eligible for the trial. And that afternoon, he died.
After this happened, I was so enraged. Just the perversity of that sequence of events. And my father was such a good person, and for him to die that way, and for me to see it. I just couldn’t get over it, and I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t sleep at all. If I did manage to fall asleep, I would have horrible nightmares and wake up with this feeling of dread that I was going to die exactly the way my father did. And if anyone tried to help me, I would just get angrier and angrier, and nobody could do anything. Until I got a letter from my friend Beth.
But before I tell you what Beth’s letter said, I have to tell you a little about Beth.
When my friend Beth was about to turn forty, she had been married for twelve years to a really charming and successful guy, and they had two beautiful children, ages three and six. And they were all in the car on their way back from a weekend family outing. My friend Beth was driving, her husband was in the passenger seat, and the two kids were in the back. And Beth’s husband’s cell phone was on the divider between them.
The phone rang, and Beth looked down and saw that it was one of his co-workers, Anita. And he rejected the call. And Beth asked, “Oh, why didn’t you take that call from Anita? If she’s calling on a weekend, it must be something important about work.” And he just gave her some answer that didn’t make any sense at all.
And Beth thought that was strange, and it sort of continued to bother her all day. And that night, she was lying awake at two in the morning, and it was still bothering her, this phone call. So she wakes up her husband and says, “Look, I know something was weird with that phone call today. You tell me right now what it is.”
And he gets up, and says, “Okay, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this. I guess now is the time.”
Basically, for the past twelve years of their marriage, plus the four years they’d been dating before that, this man had been sleeping with strippers, prostitutes, random women he’d picked up in bars. He said it was like over a hundred women. And the first words that came out of Beth’s mouth were, “Did you use condoms?” And he said, “Not usually. But, but! You were always the one who I loved. Those other women were just sex. I always loved you.”
Until Anita, this woman from work. They’d been seeing each other for the past six months, they were in love, and now Anita wanted to have a baby. So Beth’s husband was going to leave my friend Beth and their kids for this woman, Anita.
Obviously, it’s the night from hell. My friend Beth doesn’t get any sleep. And the next morning, she’s in the shower and, in a total freak accident, she somehow manages to slip and fall, and, in the process of falling, claws out her own cornea.
(Light musical underscoring begins.)
True story.
So after this happened, I was one of the people who helped Beth through the trauma of that experience. And since then, she had moved across the country. And when she heard about what had happened to my father, she wrote me a letter, and this is what the letter said.
HORRIBLE THINGS
It’s horrible what happened
And I’m sorry that you’re suffering
You probably won’t feel better for a while
Don’t worry I won’t tell you
To get on with your life
And I promise I won’t try to make you smile
I don’t know what you’re going through
But I know what it’s like to want to die
When life insists on going on
That’s when I sing a little song
That makes me feel a little better
Just a little
Not a lot
Who do you think you are?
To be immune from tragedy?
What makes you special?
That you should go unscathed?
(Instrumental Break)
It’s horrible what happened
And I’m sorry that your mind is filled
With all those agonizing memories
I regret that I
Can’t help with words of comfort
Or reassuring expertise
But I know what it’s like to cry
How could this have happened?
Why on earth should I be cursed?
That’s when I sing a little song
That makes me feel a little better
Just a little
Not a lot
Who do you think you are?
To be immune from tragedy?
What makes you special?
That you should go unscathed?
(Instrumental Break)
Horrible things happen all the time
Horrible things happen all the time
So after I read Beth’s letter, I asked myself, “Okay, so, who do you think you are?” And the answer was, “I think I’m special.” I believe, deep down, with all my heart, that I deserve to be immune not only from loneliness and tragedy, but also from aging, sickness and death.
(Light musical underscoring begins.)
But I’m not special. I’m a person. And when you’re a person, all kinds of really terrible things can happen to you. That’s why my father died the way he did, and if I die the same way, it’ll be for the same reason: because I’m a person. Just like my father, just like my Uncle John, just like everyone. And again, it wasn’t some big, profound revelation. But, for the first time in a long time, I felt a very little bit of comfort.
I’M GONNA DIE
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
(Instrumental Break)
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
Someone will miss me
Someone will be so sad
And it’ll hurt
It’s gonna hurt so bad
Someone will miss me
Someone will be so sad
And it’ll hurt
It’s gonna hurt so bad
(Instrumental Break)
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
I’m gonna die
I’m gonna die someday
Then I’ll be gone
And it’ll be okay
Someone will miss me
Someone will be so sad
And it’ll hurt
It’s gonna hurt so bad
Someone will miss me
Someone will be so sad
And it’ll hurt
It’s gonna hurt so bad
(Instrumental Break)
We’re alive but we can’t live forever
We can’t keep each other safe from harm
We’re alive but we can’t live forever
We're Gonna Die Page 2