Eulogy

i heard this on grey's anatomy and was compelled to write these lovely lyrics down.

Quite obvious from the title, but it's just reminiscing after someone's died.

He remembers how things used to be when they were young and together and he feels a desperate desire to go back. Then he moves to despair at thinking about all the things the dead person will never do. He doesn't want them to be afraid, but at the same time he's afraid himself because this person is gone and so his "best days" are over.

The idea of "the country that I knew" as being before 9/11 is interesting and puts the whole song on a greater scale. Personally I prefer to think of it as being simply one person thinking about a friend who's died. I just see it as his wish that things were different - he'd pay to go back. To him it seems like the entire country's changed because the world feels so different without this one person in it.

i love that song, too...

a dollar for the country that i knew- before 9/11 ????

I just thought about 9/11 cause I think you can hear a plane in the song in the part between "believe me when i tell you not to fear".... and ... "a dollar for the country that i knew"?! Right or wrong?

I believe (and this is just a personal interpretation from watching too many romance movies) that this person is talking towards a person that he loved that had died tragically and was not defended by our country's justice sytem (a dollar for the country that I knew) Since the words "that autumn morning everything was clear" stand out as not at all like the others in that stanza, I think they carry a deeper meaning for the songwriter than any others. This makes me think (again, based on an overdose of romance) that the artist planned to propose to the person the morning that she died... yeah this is probably very wrong, but I think this might be it.