Its about regret. It doesn't have to do with that regret being spoken or thought of at a funeral or at death. It is about the perpetual moment and infinity of regret and loss. Each verse rehearses some moment that passed between two people. But told in a tone of loss and lament. That is why each verse starts with one person imploring the other, who has been lost, for whatever exactly the reason. As to what the specific nature of that reason the best we get--and all that is appropriate to know (since it is in life's ambiguity that its profundity is to be found)--comes in the second to last verse. The one asking to be remembered "seldomly." Though: I don't think that the "seldomly" really attaches, as a lot of people maybe are suggested, to some untoward gesture being rebuffed because one person didn't care for the other. The "seldomly" refers to his "coming up with anger" in response to her feeling their bond to one another has been like a "trapeze act" that was too tenuous, even if exhilarating, to last. It is the unexpectedness or the difficulty of that kind of decision that makes him "come up with [the] anger" that was made even more ominous--to the point of him now asking this part not be remembered but 'seldomly'--when the parking lot also happened to be filling up with the dogs pouring out of the circus (doubling the 'trapeze swinger' metaphor). This is the second to last verse because it flows naturally into the last where the literal episode of them being at a circus--compounded by her using what they saw there as a metaphor for things b/w them needing to come to an end--is blended with the other imagery in previous verses about heaven. The last verse is there to imply the infinity of the loss and regret (regardless of how close, in the present, the narrator is to his own final end). That is why the instruction is to remember this of him "finally,"--all his clawing, and effort, and hope, and trying or jumping through hoops, and all the sentiment. Which will, he knows now, remain frozen as a loss he feels so much so that even "at the pearly gates" he'll still, in a sense, be "clawing." How so? Because even there, what he'll do his best to be doing is to "make a drawing" of all these seemingly contrasting or even opposing pairings. These parings not only beautifully pulling all the metaphorical imagery of the song into one place, but doing so, even more poignantly, in service of what is revealed to be in the last line another (and the song's main) metaphor. Because all these contrasting and even opposing pairings are there watching, bonded to one another, in baited breath TWO "frightened trapeze swingerS" who in his drawing did, despite their fear, continue their dance despite all the odds. The "drawing" he'd make up at the pearly gates, in other words, would still find him "clawing"and fighting to show that their "trapeze act" WAS meant to last, a sentiment with which the anxious onlookers in his drawing--both G-d AND lucifer, both angels And their sinners, etc.--evidently also are joined together in rooting for.
Its about regret. It doesn't have to do with that regret being spoken or thought of at a funeral or at death. It is about the perpetual moment and infinity of regret and loss. Each verse rehearses some moment that passed between two people. But told in a tone of loss and lament. That is why each verse starts with one person imploring the other, who has been lost, for whatever exactly the reason. As to what the specific nature of that reason the best we get--and all that is appropriate to know (since it is in life's ambiguity that its profundity is to be found)--comes in the second to last verse. The one asking to be remembered "seldomly." Though: I don't think that the "seldomly" really attaches, as a lot of people maybe are suggested, to some untoward gesture being rebuffed because one person didn't care for the other. The "seldomly" refers to his "coming up with anger" in response to her feeling their bond to one another has been like a "trapeze act" that was too tenuous, even if exhilarating, to last. It is the unexpectedness or the difficulty of that kind of decision that makes him "come up with [the] anger" that was made even more ominous--to the point of him now asking this part not be remembered but 'seldomly'--when the parking lot also happened to be filling up with the dogs pouring out of the circus (doubling the 'trapeze swinger' metaphor). This is the second to last verse because it flows naturally into the last where the literal episode of them being at a circus--compounded by her using what they saw there as a metaphor for things b/w them needing to come to an end--is blended with the other imagery in previous verses about heaven. The last verse is there to imply the infinity of the loss and regret (regardless of how close, in the present, the narrator is to his own final end). That is why the instruction is to remember this of him "finally,"--all his clawing, and effort, and hope, and trying or jumping through hoops, and all the sentiment. Which will, he knows now, remain frozen as a loss he feels so much so that even "at the pearly gates" he'll still, in a sense, be "clawing." How so? Because even there, what he'll do his best to be doing is to "make a drawing" of all these seemingly contrasting or even opposing pairings. These parings not only beautifully pulling all the metaphorical imagery of the song into one place, but doing so, even more poignantly, in service of what is revealed to be in the last line another (and the song's main) metaphor. Because all these contrasting and even opposing pairings are there watching, bonded to one another, in baited breath TWO "frightened trapeze swingerS" who in his drawing did, despite their fear, continue their dance despite all the odds. The "drawing" he'd make up at the pearly gates, in other words, would still find him "clawing"and fighting to show that their "trapeze act" WAS meant to last, a sentiment with which the anxious onlookers in his drawing--both G-d AND lucifer, both angels And their sinners, etc.--evidently also are joined together in rooting for.