The Ache That Never Goes Away

I never used to get sentimental. Once something is gone, it's gone, I figured.

The problem is, when someone dies, they never go away. So, I ache for what they deserved and never got, for what we could have had, if one of us, at least, had only known. Try as I might to will them, pray them, or rationalize them away, those aches never go.

That's not what this song is about. But, on a day when ugly greedy, vastly-inferior people show up making demands -- again -- that's what this song ignites in me. Memories. Sentiment. An ache for lost love that haunts me years later. I don't mean romance; I mean the enduring kind -- compassion, sacrifice, friendship, shared pain, shared joy, integrity, loyalty.

These people I miss are not the only people I ever loved but, in their clumsy, imperfect, and now-absent ways, they were the only two people who ever loved me. Dead and gone since 1994 and 2009, forever loved, and forever called to mind by The Innocence Mission and "Martha Avenue Love Song".