SO FAR AWAY
A hymn to sorrow,
a cry for help,
a tearful song,
fuck the world!!!
You never said goodbye.
That is where I am in July 2021, and you know what? I stand by every word.
The song is Roxette's So Far Away, and it arrives at exactly the wrong moment, which means it arrives at exactly the right moment. There are songs that make me feel better, songs that distract me, and songs that seem to look at the mess on the floor and say, “Yes, that looks about right.”
Grief is a strange business. Everybody seems to have advice for it. Give it time. Let yourself feel. Remember the good things. Very nice. Put it on a greeting card and sell it at Walgreens.
What nobody seems to mention is that grief can also be infuriating. I don't want a lesson, I don't want a silver lining, and I certainly don't want someone telling me that everything happens for a reason, because if one more person says that, something is going to happen for a reason, and it may not be particularly pleasant.
Sometimes I just miss someone. Sometimes I am angry. Sometimes I want to cry, and sometimes I want to tell the entire world to go fuck itself. There is no particular order to any of this, and I don't see why there should be.
That is where Roxette comes in. So Far Away feels like a song for the part of grief that refuses to behave itself. It doesn't tidy anything up for me or hand me some convenient little conclusion. It simply stays next to me while I am pissed off, heartbroken, and wondering who the hell thought this was a good idea.
The worst part is still the simplest one: you never said goodbye. That sentence alone does all the work.