Desperately

I was driving to school yesterday morning and I found myself listening to the Bruce Robison Wrapped CD that my husband had left playing. I like Bruce Robison. I like his songs. I especially like his voice  —it’s a natural voice that fits the music he’s writing while adding just the right tone for the song. (So I’m not a music critic — sue me.)

 I’m sorry – you think you don’t know who Bruce Robison is, but you do. From Bruce’s bio page: Maybe it’s Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s hit version of “Angry All the Time,” or George Strait’s cover of “Wrapped” or even the Dixie Chicks’ No. 1 hit, “Travelin’ Soldier.” So yeah, if you ever listen to country music at all, you’ve heard Bruce Robinson’s songs. 

So I was listening to this CD and I was hearing the words to “Desperately” which is so obviously a love song and there’s this repeating line that says, “But desperately … I long to feel your touch, but you left me all alone in love”. And like I said, it’s so obviously a love song about the loss of a lover, but all I could think about was people I love who are not with me every day, and some people who are.

I was thinking about aunts and uncles and friends. I was thinking about my Great-Grandma Lola, whose lap I sat in while she read to me or peeled apples. I was thinking of her hands and how, as just a little girl, I thought, “I hope one day my hands look just like hers”. And I was thinking of my Grandma Cross and how I can’t even drive to the beach without stopping by her grave and standing there crying like a baby — still — when nine years have passed since she died. And I was thinking of my uncle, Allen, who died in 1996 and never knew his birthmother.

But I was also thinking of you, MA, and the sweet baby you’re carrying and how I can’t wait to know him or her and of how, when we talk, you really make me think; Of you, Em, and how you make me laugh and how utterly cool you are and how gorgeous your HK’s lips are; Of you, Monk, and how you always ask the questions about my life that no one else thinks to ask and how you really listen to what I have to say; Of you, MMC, and how you make me laugh and think, of how it feels to drive home from the ATL, singing Don Williams or Thunder Road or a myriad of other artists/songs with you while our kids sleep snuggled under covers, all buckled in. 

I am so incredibly blessed and thankful that so many of the people I love — if not just down the road from me — are simply a phone call away. I wish that the people I love were with me all the time and sometimes, I’m so sad that they are not here, where I can hug them and tell them just one more time how much I love them. And this song, Bruce Robison’s "Desperately", just struck me.

I’m hoping that a song, or a book, or the words of someone you love will make your heart full today like this one did for me. 

That’s all.