POD313 Lyrics

Hey, it's Peyton. I'm having one of those lie in bed and pull the covers over your head kinda nights. You ever had one of those? I don't know, I just - I've been thinking a lot, just remembering... Like when I was a kid and my mom died, you know, I tried to find her at the funeral and not with my eyes, but with myself, you know... my soul I guess.

I read somewhere that when a person dies, sometimes they hang around through the funeral and I guess, I don't know, they just want to make sure you don't just toss em off the back of a truck on the side of the road. They wanna make sure their body gets a proper burial. And I guess they also wanna make sure everyone is doing okay. I loved that, you know. Not only 'cause I thought it was kinda cool that you could float up into the air and watch your body get burried... but also 'cause it meant when you die, you're not just gone, you know... you still exist even if your body doesn't. Where you go from there, whether it's to heaven or hell, or right back down to earth for another lifetime, I don't know, but it's not just nothing... that seems right to me. Comforting, sure but it's not just that... seems real.

So I looked for her; my mom. I tried to feel her there; try to find her at the funeral. But I couldn't, you know? There was no rush of warm air or tingle at the back of my head... just nothing. Like that girl in A Chorus Line who's in acting class, pretending to be a bobsled and everyone shouting, "Oh I feel the snow! I feel the cold! I feel the air!" and she just says, "I felt nothing." Brooke used to play that album all the time, growing up. We'd act out all the parts and fight over who'd get to be the girl who felt nothing... and then suddenly, at my mom's funeral, there I was, you know, I really was THAT girl you know, the girl who felt nothing. Actually, it was worse than nothing. It was a vacuum, an actual pull on my stomach, my heart, you know, I could feel where she was missing. She wasn't just hanging around, she was really gone. So I went home and I shut the door, climbed into bed and Brooke came over at some point and just climbed in with me... and I remember she put her arm around me the way my mom used to do when I climbed into her bed, after like a bad dream... and then Brooke told me we'd have to stay friends forever 'cause I'd always need someone around to remind me how great my mom was. So I could close my door and turn off my light and pull the covers over my head and try to escape as much as I wanted but Brooke was always gonna come after me 'cause she owed at least that much to my mom. And just as I was trying to fight back the tears on that one, I felt - I felt something, you know? I don't know it sounds crazy but I just felt like my mom was there, you know, in that room, hovering up around the ceiling; checking to make sure everyone was okay. I never told Brooke that... or anyone, really. Actually, you know what, scratch that. I think there was one drunken night and I tried to explain the whole paranormal phenomenon to Nathan... but it took about 10 seconds for him to start making fun of me. Something tells me that him falling in love with Haley has done a lot for his faith in things that can't be explained with hard science.

Anyway, sometimes I wonder if that was real; feeling my mom there... or if I just needed to believe in it, that moment... but honestly, deep down in my heart, I really do think that my mom was alive and well, you know, she's just - she's somewhere else. And I don't think that because it makes me feel better, because honestly it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make me miss her any less, it doesn't push down the lump in my throat or untie the knot in my stomach... it just... is.

There's a poem, Lucas gave it to me actually... it kinda makes me feel that I'm not crazy so I thought I'd share it with you. Here it goes:

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until at length she hangs
like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky
come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side
says: "There, she is gone!"
"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was
when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight
to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
"Here she comes!"
And that is dying.

So, if you're missing someone tonight, wondering where they might be, or if they even are still at all... I hope that helps... and the lump in your throat, knot in your stomach, it goes away. I don't know how, but it does. It just takes time... but if you find a way to make it happen any faster, hey... feel free to let me know.