At first I didn't think much of this album. I played it a few times, nothing really grabbed me and a couple of sections were downright hard to listen to. Just as I was about to dismiss it I noticed the lyrics.
This is a heart-wrenching record; ten songs telling a story of a woman slowly succumbing to bone cancer, from the perspective of her caregiver-turned-husband, and how she takes out her pain and suffering on him. Actually, the story isn't that straight-forward and quite open to interpretation. It may be an allegory for a self-destructive person and an abusive relationship. Or not. In any case, thinking about the lyrics both ways makes them more powerful. Most of us have either experienced (or have known someone in) a relationship where they should leave, but it has taken over their existence and they aren't able to let go.
Anyway, below are some of the lyrics (with comments only in the literal context.)
He works at the Kettering cancer ward and she becomes his patient:
I wish that I had known in that first minute we met / the unpayable debt that I owed you / Because you'd been abused by the bone that refused you / and you hired me to make up for that
She becomes suicidal (several references to Sylvia Plath):
Sylvia, get your head out of the oven / Go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you / Sylvia, get your head out of the covers / Let me take your temperature / you can throw the thermometer right back at me / if that's what you want to do, okay?
...
Sylvia, can't you see what you are doing? / Can't you see I'm scared to speak and I hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry / Sylvia, I only talk when you're sleeping / That's when I tell you everything /And I imagine that somehow you're going to hear me
They quickly marry:
With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger / I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer
He initially refuses to give up hope for a miracle turnaround, but eventually accepts her fate:
In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up / when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough." / He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted) / and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you / the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you / Something in my throat made my next words shake / and something in the wires made the light bulbs break
After her death he struggles to move on and re-engage with the world:
It was easier to lock the doors and kill the phones than to show my skin / because the hardest thing is never to repent for someone else, it's letting people in
...
[About a friend] When your helicopter came and tried to lift me out, I put its rope around my neck / And after that you didn't bother with the airlift and rescue - you knew just what to expect
...
[Convincing himself] We can't rely on photographs and visitation time, but I just don't know where to begin / I wanna bust down the door, if you're willing to forgive / I've got the keys, I'm letting people in
...
[Someone talking to him at the wake.] Some patients can't be saved, but that burden's not on you / Don't let anyone tell you you deserve that
...
[In dreams later] When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift / I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift) / But you return to me at night, just when I think I may have fallen asleep / Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak
Clearly, not the most uplifting album. It is tragic but never sentimental, deeply moving but never sugarcoated. There are no lessons to be learned that make it all better in the end. There are no heart-warming moments that make us appreciate how relationships help us through terrible times. In short, this is not a Lifetime-movie.
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