Going to Your Funeral Part I

Just to correct a few things: his mother was still alive when Electro-Shock Blues was released, although he knew she had cancer. According to his autobiography this song was written about the funeral of his sister, Elizabeth.

Most of this album makes me teary, but one of the parts that really breaks my heart is when he says, 'Honolulu hurricane/I knew that you were not insane'. That part seems to be for his sister.

Lord. This guy's full of powerful stuff.

"scrabby wounds that never heal the woman was only a girl"

His sister. Scrabby wounds by the electro-shock therapy.

Onceagain is wrong. E was never a drug addict.

At the start, E appears to be talking to 'us' - the listeners: we are who he says 'Look...' to. But it becomes obvious that the song is actually addressed to his sister - at her own funeral. The box (coffin) holds 'the sand that was once you'.

It's a very powerful image: a train-of-thought lyric addressed to the deceased at her own funeral.

What always gets me about this song is the resulting contrast between him getting over it and him totally incapable of dealing with it: 'what I need to miss is you', he says to someone as he instructs her to look at the people assembled for her funeral.

He's obviously not going to be able to miss her if he keeps on pretending she's there.

I've fortunately only had to have gone to one funeral, but it really is a strange feeling to first see a coffin and suddenly process the fact that someone you once knew is inside there.

Slightly off topic: I don't think everything he says is necessarily to be taken as the truth. Autobiographical, oh yes, but he didn't necessarily hang out behind the school with his sister (or mother?), it's just a sentence that is meant to present us with our own reality. Either we have lost friends, and our thoughts will stray back to smoking (or whatever) behind the school, or, if we haven't yet "been there", it will ask us, as listeners, "what if?" he does this a lot on this album, appeals to people in a way that's general for a lot of people, but he in a way makes it his own in a very hauntingly honest way. Just an interesting thought about the album.

"going to your funeral and I’m feeling like a fool no one’s gonna take the blame thinking about the days of hanging out behind the school"

I'm pretty sure this is about the funeral of one of his friends that passed, not his sister or mother. Actually, I think his mother is discussed in the first verse, his sister in the second, and his friends in the third. Pretty overwhelming stuff.

Also, E did hang out with his sister- he ended up falling in with a lot of her group of friends. And this is very by-and-by, but he did take drugs as a kid but he got over it when he grew up a bit more. So I guess it's like the opposite of what onceagain said!

beautiful song.. it describes the feelings of losing someone close unexpectedly and then goin 2 their funeral perfectly

look at all the people with their heads down in their hands when everything I'm feeling makes it hard to understand that, what I need to miss... It's what I need to miss... is you

it's unreal how accurate this is.. you have so many friends and family at the funeral.. you struggle to comprehend what you have lost.. ur in shock and you're not yet capable of grieving

One can see that E is singing from experience.. one would expect to instantly grieve and miss the person you have lost.. but that's not how it happens. The grieving comes later.. at the funeral ur just trying to cope and figure out how its possible for everything to change in the blink of an eye