Dead Meadow

This song reads like a recap of the life of parent or husband who had a great life, but the passage of time and an additional trauma blew apart.

"The house you built no longer the same" could be interpreted as the house that is the family you built over your life, the family home. This topic is revisited by BLS almost a decade later in "Angel of Mercy" where we can feel the pain and sorrow of our children leaving us as "all the birds have flown". "All alone at last" in this context is as if the singer has been put through the ringer. "Twisted and insane, the house you built, no longer the same". Specifically the trauma is coming from within their own immediate family, and over a lengthy period of time. As if an intense drama has been played out, where the consequences are irreversible "Once you're here, you can't come back" is not referring a physical place, but a place in the narrative where the point of no return has been breached. This drives the listener to realize the singer is at least partly responsible for their situation. At this point we could be left thinking maybe its just the passage of time that has taken its ultimate toll, and in a way it has. Though more so from the perspective that one let time slip away until it was too late to mend the bridges. This is supported by the "We choose our paths, when all is done and said" in the lines that follow. The guilt is eating away at the singer, "Ghosts inside your head" are the ghosts of his past deeds. Their spouse at this point is also either divorced or passed on, as again we are alone at last.

The Dead Meadow is a theoretical place you find yourself in late in life. Your family has grown, the kids have left. It's a place that at one point was full of life, hope, and energy. Kids ran rambunctiously through the house, every room was teeming with life and the future was bright. That same meadow is now bleak, the story told, and nothing but the end is left. You're alone facing the reaper because your actions drew those you loved the most away from you. Not only is it incredibly tragic, it is terrifying. Nothing is sustained in the dead meadow, the damage is so far spread you do not possess the time to repair the pain you've caused. You will reap what you sow, and your death will pass as if your life meant nothing. "Live another day, then you die." Everything that happens in this space between now and dying is just filler.

WOW man, that is DEEP

i think it'S about a big mistake someone made and now he's lost and can't change what happend.