Living La Viudez Loca

Friday, May 13, 2016

It's the End of the World As We Know It And I (Mostly) Feel Fine

Welcome to the first installment of recent widower's reviews, where I (the recent widower in question) look at some songs and possibly other media that relate- however remotely- to how I feel since my wife's death.
It should become a semi-regular feature on this blog since it's easy to do (except when I'm using it as a dual-purpose post, like this one) and I need filler from time to time.  So let's get to it.

"It's the end of the world... ": Phrased this way, this part of the song's title would seem to have nothing at all to do with my situation.  After all, regardless of however much pain my wife's death may cause me at times, the earth seems to keep revolving around the sun.  I can't even claim that civilization has collapsed, much less that the world has ended.  However, context is everything, so one should not skip past the extremely important qualifier to get to the seemingly paradoxical second part, since how can someone feel fine if there no longer exists a world on which to do so?  As the "as we know it" makes clear, it isn't about the literal end of the world. Rather, it's about how, as Bob Dylan once put it, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'".  Put this way, the song corresponds extremely well with much of my life, although an exact enumeration of these changes will have to wait for another post.
As the second part of my post title indicates, I'm more or less coping well with such changes.  Despite the loss, I still consider myself blessed (to have known and married my wife, among many other ways) each and every day that I have the privilege of waking up.  There are times- moments, actually- when the heart wants something that the head knows all too well isn't going to happen and it's the sad duty of the latter to drag the former kickin' and screamin' back to reality.  I cannot place too much emphasis here on their transitory nature: they and the emotions they produce last for a mere instant or so.  Hence, the "Silly, stupid, foolishly desperate me" I added to the end of "I just saw my (dead) wife" does not reflect how I usually feel about myself, but was a fleeting reaction to what I just experienced.
As for the rest of the song, I'd have to understand it before I could have an opinion about whether it relates to my life.  While I still enjoy listening to it, I don't have the time to figure out what appears to me as a convoluted mishmash attempting to sound relevant, but anyone who can interpret it is free to do so in the comments or leave a link.  Come to think of it, I should have probably just went with reviewing "Everybody Hurts" instead.

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