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Final Words
from A Bit Of Light by Tobin Mueller
Jump to: LyricsLiner NotesA Bit Of Light album Click here to download the mp3.
Lyrics

Looking out the window, so hard to recognize.
(The gardens and the family tree are labors that don't lie.)
Final moments. The white room all around.
It's hard to think of things to say when you're never coming home.

"This is it. This is it," you say,
"So don't you waste a day."
This is it?

Never sadness in your eyes. No lines of regret.
And yet you turn and tell me to be different than you.
"Do it differently than me."
What do these words mean from a father who will always be my saint?

"This is it. This is it," you say,
"So don't you waste a day."
This is it?

Hold a mirror to your face.
Help you comb your hair in place.
Father, son and ghost embrace.
You look up and you say you're happy.

Don't know why, but I understand.

Bo du du ba ba di do do di
Bo du du ba bo.

Wish you wish me
Wishing for the other
If you if me
Wanting only to be...

©2004, 2007 Tobin Mueller

Liner Notes

Song Notes: My father had several visits to the hospital before finally falling victim to a massive stroke. He survived, but it left him without the use of his entire left side. He would never be coming home again. He also suffered from profound dementia. The silver lining of his dementia was that he was rarely aware of this end game tragedy, that he would never walk again or move his left arm. For the most part, he would wake up every morning thinking he was in the prime of life, completely healthy, with no recollection of his stroke, his dementia, or where he was. However, every now and then, for about 3-5 minutes, clarity would return. He would ask why he was in an old folks home, what had happened to him. Hearing the truth would stun him for a moment, and then he would become philosophical. He was a very successful man, very proud of his accomplishments, his career, his family, his spiritual beliefs, his life choices. But he always looked at me with a sense, surely not of envy, but of a different kind of pride that spoke to very different choices and an entirely different life: Mine. He always gave me the freedom to be a completely different kind of person than he chose to be.

We were as close as two people could be, father and son, at the end. This song is about his final words. The soprano sax is played by Woody Mankowski, my collaborator on both The Mueller's Wheel and Come In Funky.

I was going to include another 2004 song I did with Woody on this album, but for a reason I can no longer recall, it didn't make the cut. Pilgrim Of The Great Return also has Woody playing soprano sax, as well as my son, Anton, on acoustic guitar and John Selvia on bass. It was finally released on my 2016 album, If I Could Live Long Enough. That song also features

A Bit Of Light

Return to the A Bit Of Light page.

Other lyrics pages from A Bit Of Light

  1. Be My Love
  2. I Have Dreamed In Another
  3. Bring On The Storm
  4. Crazy Story
  5. The Waitress
  6. Icarus
  7. Door In My Heart
  8. Hold On To The Thread Of Love
  9. Can't Complain
  10. Let Me Play
  11. My Heart Still Beats
  12. When You Left
  13. Final Words
  14. Loolay Lullaby