“And even if the whole world has forgotten, the song remembers when.” ~Trisha Yearwood.
The other day, I was tripping through the light fantastic, looking at Youtube videos, when I came across this lovely song by Trisha Yearwood. It brought up some good memories from college and high school, which is fun, because that’s what the song itself is about: The power of a song to bring up memories. Certain songs have the ability to transport us back in time and bring up memories that even we might have forgotten about.
Many of these memories are happy ones, such as Garth Brooks’ Friends In Low Places, which always takes me back to my senior year in high school, when that was our class song.
What? It was a small town in the middle of Nowhere, Alabama! What did you *think* our class song would be!?!? 
Senior year was a good year. We spent a lot of time reminiscing, because most of us had been in school together since preschool, and we had a lot of shared memories at that point. Things we did as kids together. Getting in schoolyard fights. Birthday parties. Our class field trip to ride the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Our school play in sixth grade. Watching the Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video 8 gazillion times in elementary school. Lots and lots of shared memories.
Not all of those memories were good ones. The year before, we had lost two classmates in an accident, and two songs were forever burned into my mind and associated with them. Jeff’s favorite song was Skid Row’s I Remember You, and now every time I hear that song, I think about him. His easy smile, his supernatural ability to find trouble…that was Jeff. And even though we didn’t really like each other, I missed him when he was gone. He was likeable, and friendly, even if you didn’t really want to like him or be friends with him.
Robin died that night, too. But unlike my somewhat ambivalent feelings towards Jeff, I loved Robin like a brother. Robin and I played baseball together. He lived down the street from my grandmother, and so we spent many afternoons playing together, and getting in trouble together. My own parents never “switched” me, but Robin’s mother sure has. More than a few times. We rode bicycles, we played backyard football, we stole candy out of the store together. We grew up together. Even today, I sometimes feel closer to Robin’s family than I do my own.
But when he died…so many bad memories of that time. We argued right before he died. My last words to him were a heated exchange. His favorite song, Stairway to Heaven, and how much I hated it. Something so stupid, so trivial…and how I swore that I would never let that happen again. How many times have I broken that promise since then…
Those days and weeks after the accident were a whirlwind of emotion to me. Flashes of tears and hugs, being strong for those who couldn’t be strong on their own, being tender and compassionate to people who were unaccustomed to me being either tender or compassionate (God, I was so different then!), The dream I had where Robin came to me and told me to take care of his sisters, and how I did that, and how I still do that, even though they are grown and married and have kids of their own now. Lots and lots of wheels were set into motion that night, and some of them still haven’t stopped rolling. Perhaps they never will.
Because, even if the whole world has forgotten, the song remembers when.
I had many more examples I wanted to share in this post, and honestly, I didn’t intend this to be so much about Jeff and Robin…I meant for them just to be another anecdote in a long list of songs that always bring up memories, some pleasant, some sad. But that plan just doesn’t feel right anymore. 19 years later, I still miss those guys.
Love Always,
Jay