Over the years, I have tried countless times to capitalize on my own tragedy by writing songs about the passing of my late mother. I failed each time. Every attempt seemed too on the nose, too self indulgent, or too sad for the sake of being sad. Each time, I had come to the same conclusion. The theme song to my own self-proclaimed tragedy had already existed. And I had already heard it.
On the night of my mother's passing, a few hours past midnight (I wanna sayyy like 3-4 am-ish? [idk man i was 12 i cant remember that well]), I was in my sister Pauline's 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse alongside my eldest sister Chrisley. (To digress very quickly, my eldest sister Chrisley's family nickname was Vincee. Nowhere close to her legal name. To this day, I don't know why that's her nickname. Or at least I don't remember why.) We had just left the hospital. Our lives irreparably changed. And My sister Pauline seized this opportunity with Herculean efforts. On that cold Tuesday morning, My sister Pauline had put me on harder than anyone has ever put anyone on ever. My sister queued Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars." Before then, the only exposure I've had to alternative music had been Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked" (i only knew of that one song from Gearbox's Borderlands). I had never heard such potent melancholy before in my life. I've heard pop radio songs about sadness, but I've never listened to true melancholy manifest. I remember telling my Middle School contemporaries that it was "the saddest song I've ever heard." In the midst of the darkest moment of my life, my sister Pauline had decided to introduce me to Elliott Smith. Quite possibly the best and worst thing you could do to a grieving twelve year old.
Elliott Smith's wistful and ghostlike vocals had forcefully broken down every shield of irony I had put up in my subconscious. His whispers "... the potential you'll be that you'll never see..." had struck me in my core. It felt like a cold hand grasping my heart. Clutching and releasing in an attempt to keep my heart beating after it had stopped. To this day, whenever I listen to the song I can still remember exactly where I was on that Tuesday morning. I could still taste the cold tap water from the hospital's public drinking fountain. I could still see the fogged-up windows of my sister's 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse. And besides the sound of Elliott Smith's warm guitar playing and pensive vocals, I can still remember that my sisters didn't say a single word during that car ride. Our dear mother was truly gone. After a year-(and some change)-long fight against colon cancer. I can remember the plans we had made after she would have hypothetically gotten better. I can also remember what the chemotherapy had done to my mother. At some point my mother had become something entirely different. She was gaunt. She was barely intelligible. I remember playing Bethesda Studios' Fallout 4 (i got it for christmas), and my skinny far-gone mother jokingly compared herself to the ghouls in the game. I said nothing. I remember feeling ashamed because I knew she was right. Before she passed, my subconscious tried to convince me that she was already gone. In an attempt to protect myself, I fully convinced myself that the chemotherapy had killed her already. Not quite. She's gone when she's gone. And Elliott Smith had sung her eulogy to me.