The Way

a very quick search of the web shows:

songfacts.com/detail.php

This song is based on the true story of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Salado, Texas who drove to a nearby family reunion and kept going. She had Alzheimer's disease and he was recovering from brain surgery. When they disappeared, a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman wrote a series of articles about the missing couple. Fastball bassist Tony Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading the articles (the band is from Austin). He says, "It's a romanticized take on what happened" - he "pictured them taking off to have fun, like they did when they first met." However, he found out after writing the song that the couple had died. They were found at the bottom of a canyon in Arkansas about a 3-day drive from their destination. (thanks, Crystal - Springfield, MO)

I love this song. Every time I listen to it I get goose bumps and/or start to cry. Okay well anyways, I read this on this one website and it sounds pretty legit: "An elderly couple in Texas (where Fastball is from) went out to drive to a Pioneer Day Festival one day in June 1997, but they never arrived. Both of them were found dead 2 weeks later at the bottom of a ravine in Arkansas, which was way off of their original driving route. Tony Scalzo, the bassist of the band, was inspired to write the song after reading the story." This gives a different meaning to the lines "And when the car broke down they started walking Where were they going without ever knowing the way?" meaning that after the car crashed their spirits just left the car and.... well you can figure out the rest. I'm just going to stop typing now because if I don't I'm going to talk about every line in the song and bore everyone to death. Sorry if this didn't help anyone, I just thought I would put in my 2 cents worth(:

Odd coincidence....

Family takes comfort that elderly Calgary couple died together By Jen Gerson, Canwest News ServiceJune 3, 2010 11:04 PM



Missing elderly couple Allen Berrington, 90 and Margaret Berrington, 91 in Calgary, Alberta on June 2, 2010. Photograph by: Courtesy, Berrington family CALGARY – Allen and Margaret Berrington were married for nearly seven decades, lived in the same home for the past 50 years and were not the type of people to leave the city without a full tank of gas.

“They had a total love for each other. They were inseparable from the first and they stayed that way,” said Ken Berrington, the couple’s son.

As the Berringtons entered their 90s, they had become creatures of habit – for example, on Thursdays, they loved the seafood buffet at the Grey Eagle Casino.

And so their family is at a loss to explain how the couple wound up dead in a remote area about 70 kilometres northwest of their suburban Calgary bungalow. But they take comfort knowing the pair died together, their bodies found just 10 metres apart.

“They were together and they went together,” Ken said. “And we can take that as a positive.”

The winding roads that cross the wide swath of land between the Ghost and Red Deer rivers are usually home only to the bravest quad bikers and hikers. Cellphone coverage dies as the paved road west of Water Valley, Alta., turns to gravel.

Aside from the outdoor-types locals call “Weekenders,” only logging and oil company trucks pass through the area, where signs caution: “Roads not recommended for travel. Use at your own risk.”

The mystery remains as to how and why the Berringtons drove their 2007 dark grey Chrysler Sebring sedan into this backcountry, where they ultimately died.

After a weeklong search, the bodies of the couple were found on the rugged, isolate road by two dirt-bike riders, who called police.

It is believe that sometime over the weekend, the couple abandoned the car – its gas tank was empty – and walked three kilometres into the wilderness before succumbing to age and the elements.

Their bodies were found 10 metres apart.

The Berringtons were last seen by their son on Thursday for Margaret’s 91st birthday party. She and her 90-year-old husband failed to put away the chocolate cake and other snacks before leaving their home, locking the door behind them.

By Monday, the family realized something was wrong and called police, sparking a citywide search for the couple that involved dozens of police officers and countless aerial sweeps of the southwest suburb where they lived for more than fifty years.

Their car was found parked in the woods. There were no scratches or damage on its exterior and the interior was clean – save for a striped umbrella, orange shoe horn and handwritten directions to a location in Calgary.

According to local residents, the region’s roads quickly become impassable in poor weather, which plagued most of Alberta the weekend the Berringtons went missing.

As the couple drove farther from surrounding towns, the mud road they took narrowed to the width of a small alley. Soft shoulders and steep embankments would have made it impossible to turn around and – without a satellite phone – the Berringtons would have been unable to call for help.

Relatives say the Berringtons have family in nearby Cochrane and Water Valley, but it’s unlikely the two were trying to reach them.

“The mystery will never be unravelled,” said James Graham, the couple’s grandson. “I don’t understand why they made those choices. But I’m 100 per cent comfortable that they made those choices together and 100 per cent comfortable that they are at peace together.”

The family is satisfied with the police’s best guess: That the couple drove from their home and, somewhere along the way, got lost. The roads are poorly marked and the main road, Highway 579, connects with dozens of smaller, steeper trails.

“It gets very cold at night in Water Valley. It can get well below zero. I hope they used enough of the remaining gas to keep each other warm and, when that was exhausted, they went walking,” Graham said.

However, Graham said they would not have been able to walk a great distance through rugged terrain; the elderly pair were not hikers.

“It would have been a very frightening experience for them,” he said. “I imagine the decision to walk came out of desperation.”

The area is so remote that even local residents of Water Valley rarely venture there.

Sue Pierson, who runs the weekly coffee shop at the local community centre and has been a resident for more than three years, said she couldn’t understand how the Berringtons got so lost.

“I just don’t think that they would leave home in that weather,” she said. “Maybe they got into the backwoods and didn’t know which way was home.”

For the family of the Berringtons, the only consolation is that Allen and Margaret were together.

The pair – who met at a school dance in 1939 – had three children, eight grand children and 12 great-grandchildren.

Margaret was a housewife who studied home economics while in school, while Allen was a former air force pilot who worked for Telus after the war.

“Theirs was a classic love affair spanning seven decades,” Graham said. “They were inseparable in life. Truly a unified force.”

The family is making funeral arrangements and may combine their ashes.

“They could not have existed separately,” Graham said.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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Everyone knows that Heaven is a place that you go when you die, right? To break down the chorus: "the road that they walk on is paved in gold" --Heaven's streets are supposedly gold. "And it's always summer they'll never get cold They'll never get hungry They'll never get old and gray" -- stuff like that doesn't happen in Heaven "You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere" -- spirits? "They won't make it home but they don't really care They wanted the highway They're happy there today" -- It's said that people don't miss their earthly lives at all once they get to Heaven. So, in all probability, both the death and spiritual views of this song could be correct.

This song is based on the true story of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Salado, Texas who drove to a nearby family reunion and kept going. She had Alzheimer's disease and he was recovering from brain surgery. When they disappeared, a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman wrote a series of articles about the missing couple. Fastball bassist Tony Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading the articles (the band is from Austin). He says, "It's a romanticized take on what happened" - he "pictured them taking off to have fun, like they did when they first met." However, he found out after writing the song that the couple had died. They were found at the bottom of a canyon in Arkansas about a 3-day drive from their destination

I read somwhere that the song was inspired by an article in a newspaper about a couple of old age that went to visit their family, but never arrived

Not that there is a raging debate about this, but for the curious, here is an article that says exactly what the inspiration for the song was. The morbid contributors were correct.

citybeat.com/archives/1998/issue427/coverarticle3.html

the song IS about a couple who died, they commited suicide together becuase they didnt want to die alone without the other, the 'children' is there kids who are grown up and have families of their own

lyricizer420 is right. I saw the show too. (I <3 VH1) It's a beautiful song about a not-so beautiful thing. Let me see if I have it straight. There was this old couple, they packed up their stuff and left. Their kids didn't hear from them for a couple of days and they got worried. They went over to the house and they found their clothes out on their bed. They filed a missing persons report, but the old couple was no where to be found. Finally, a while later, they were found dead, at the bottom of a cliff, states away from where they lived.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

OK SERIOUSLY STOP FIGHTING ABOUT THE MEANING OF THE SONG WHEN IF YOU ACTUALLY READ THE WORDS AND THE ARTICLE (PROOF - DUH) THAT IS ABUOT THE COUPLE DYING. SURE WE DONT ALWAYS WANA HEAR STORIES LIKE THIS WHERE KIDS ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND AND SHIT BUT ITS LIFE. ITS AN AWSUM ASS SONG, SO DONT TRY TO LAME IT UP BY SAYING ITS NOT ABOUT DEATH BUT REALLY JUST ABOUT FAIRIES AND SPARKLES......GET REAL PEOPLE. BY THE WAY ...HAS ANYONE SEEN THE FILMCLIP...KIND OF A GIVE AWAY THE PEOPLE DIE IN THAT ONE.

I REALISE THAT EVERY INDIVIDUAL CAN PICTURE AND IMAGINE THE SONG HOW IT IS BUT THE HARSH REALITY IS IT IS ABOUT NEVER RETURNING. FOREVER WANDERING IN THE CONDITIONS OF HOW THEY LEFT THEIR LIVES.

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL SONG THAT I HAVE MUCH RESPECT FOR.