In my mom’s very last days, she requested that she be cremated and that her ashes be spread in the ocean near Hawaii, her very favorite place. This past March, at the one year anniversary of her passing, my family and I made it to Hawaii to honor her wishes. “Bright Sadness” is about that experience, which was both heartbreaking and healing. The first thing you hear in this song is my Mom’s voice, as she was filming a family video of the very same spot of the ocean where we held her ceremony. She describes the beauty of the landscape perfectly: “this has got to be the closest thing to Heaven.”

fanlink.to/BrightSadness

BRIGHT SADNESS

(this is such a beautiful place, this has got to be the closest thing to Heaven)

a bright sunrise through shattered glass,
a fountain of youth slipping through the cracks.
i drag my feet through perfect sand
toward a future i no longer understand.
but my daughters’ collection of broken shells
teach me: i can still learn lessons if i let myself.

“i’ll be alright, i’ll be alright, i’ll be alright”
it’s been a year at the mercy of a merciless tide.
but now we’re here, clothes barely dry,
we return to the ocean one more time
for you.

in the water
we pay attention
to one another.
in the water
we remember
that nothing, even death,
lasts forever.

i want to swim, i want to swim, i want to try
to trust in the mercy of the merciless tide.
my mother taught me all will be reconciled,
God, what a gift to be my mother’s child.

i want to swim, i want to swim and close my eyes
be swept up in the mercy of the merciful tide,
my mother believed i will be reconciled.
God, what a gift to be my mother’s child.

in the water
we remember
that nothing, even death,
lasts forever