Hanging Here in Space

That Christmas, before Ben died, my husband or daughter, I don't remember which one, gave me the Sacred Love CD by Sting. We listened to it that day, though not thoroughly enough for me to really hear the songs and learn the words. As it turned out, I didn't listen to it again before Ben died, and in the months that followed, I couldn't listen to any music at all.

About six months after his death, I started listening to music again, CDs that I thought would be safe, that wouldn't make me cry. And I pulled out Sacred Love in my car one day as I ran errands, cruising along in the sunshine of a late-spring day, though my thoughts were always, always, on Ben.

It's a post-9/11 album, both in release date and in content. Sting sings of war, love, memory. I wasn't expecting to find a song that would make me gasp for breath and have me sobbing halfway through, but one song, "Dead Man's Rope," nearly did me in that day, and on many days since. The lyrics took my breath away, felt just exactly right for where I was in my life: drifting, walking away from one thing and trying to walk into another, walking away from emptiness and devastation. I searched online to see just what Sting was thinking when he wrote the song, but found only a short commentary, that it is about a man trapped in a "well of memory", needing to deal with reality. I think it's a little more religious than that, at least for me, but I'll let you judge:

Dead Man's Rope
"A million footsteps, this left foot drags behind my right
But I keep walking, from daybreak, 'til the falling night
And as days turn into weeks and years
And years turn into lifetimes
I just keep walking, like I've been walking for a thousand years

Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,

If you're walking to escape, to escape from your affliction
You'd be walking in a great circle, a circle of addiction
Did you ever wonder what you'd been carrying since the world was black?
You see yourself in a looking glass with a tombstone on your back

Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away in anger, walk away in pain
Walk away from life itself, walk into the rain

All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
I'm just hanging here in space

Now I'm suspended between my darkest fears and dearest hope
Yes I've been walking, now I'm hanging from a dead man's rope
With Hell below me, and Heaven in the sky above
I've been walking, I've been walking away from Jesus' love

Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away in anger, walk away in pain
Walk away from life itself, walk into the rain

All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
I'm just hanging here in space

The shadows fall
Around my bed
When the hand of an angel,
The hand of an angel is reaching down above my head

All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
Now I'm walking in his grace
I'm walking in his footsteps
Walking in his footsteps,
Walking in his footsteps

All the days of my life I will walk with you
All the days of my life I will talk with you
All the days of my life I will share with you
All the days of my life I will bear with you

Walk away from emptiness, walk away from sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away from anger, walk away from pain
Walk away from anguish, walk into the rain."

I've been sitting here with my laptop trying to explain to you what this song meant to me, and I find I can't. It's tied too much to that time, it's too deep in my soul for me to make sense of to anyone else. But that emptiness, that sorrow, the notion of walking away from everything, but still being "led here to this place" - that's where I was, hanging in space. Waiting.