I Have Never Loved Someone the Way I Love You

One of my favorite albums of all time is All Things Will Unwind by My Brightest Diamond / Shara Worden / Shara Nova. All of the songs are fantastic, with "Be Brave" one of my favorite songs of all time. The last song on the album, "I Have Never Loved Someone the Way I Love You" is right up there, too. It is a song I can't listen to closely all the time, though, because if I do it invariably makes me cry, and that's not always a thing you can do--like when you're driving down the highway or when you're at a birthday party, for instance. 

I got to talk to Shara about this song before I saw her in a concert in Indianapolis a couple of years back, and we talked about babies and love and allathat for ten or fifteen minutes ( ). And yes, those were some of the best minutes of this man's life. In case you didn't guess it, I love Shara. (Like really. Like not a figure of speech.) Well . . . the song is from a mother's point of view, and she's thinking about what will happen to her child after she/mom dies. She tells the child that she will find a way to tell her "you're okay." And it ends with Shara repeating, "You're okay." It is just amazing how that touches my heart.

And not just mine. There's a wonderful video on The You Tub in which Shara performs the song live . . . I think she's in an empty restaurant, something like that . . . and at the end of it she has to wipe her eyes. Also, I sent a copy of the album to my older sister and told her that "I Have Never Loved Someone the Way I Love You" always made me cry if I listened too closely, and she said that it made her cry as well.

Anyway. Turn signal. Don't panic, I know where I'm going.

Joe has been really preoccupied with The Future for awhile now. For some reason, that preoccupation often takes the form of Who Will Be Alive 35 Years From Now. I've tried to give him a general rule . . . like anybody who is 45 years old or older now is probably not going to be alive in 35 years . . . but Joe doesn't cotton to generalities, so we have to take it on a case by case basis. Usually he asks about celebrities, especially wrestling celebrities. And sometimes he'll do "the math" for himself, e.g. "Harrison Ford is 74. I don't think he's going to be around in 35 years." That kind of thing. But most of the time he just asks me. "Will Mark Hamill be alive in 35 years?" "And I'll replay, "I don't think so, Joe." 

Yesterday he asked me if I would be alive in 35 years. 

I told him that I didn't think so, as that would make me 95, and the average man in America doesn't live that long. Then Joe said, "I'm going to miss you when you're gone." 

Oh.

Well, although I'm not what most people would call a religious man, I have no qualms about telling Joe and his sister Jacqueline (who is also autistic) that when I die I will be in Heaven waiting for them, so they don't need to be sad or worry about me. So first I said that to Joe, but then I thought of Shara's song, and I expanded on the explanation. I told him that even after I died that I would be right beside him all the time, even though he wouldn't be able to see me, and that I'd be whispering to him, but I wasn't sure if he'd be able to hear since I'd be so far away in Heaven. I told him that he would never be alone, though, and that if he was ever sad, he could talk to me and I would hear him, and that I would hug him and try to make him feel better. 

I don't know if he believed me or not, but he seemed comforted by the thought. And you know . . . I'm kind of starting to believe it myself. I know this, at any rate: if will power and love will allow me to whisper to my kids after I've died, then I will be whispering to my kids after I've died.

Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough . . . .