Epilogue

From what i got out of it i think that this album tells the story of a female character, based on Sylvia Plath (the suicide attempts under the house and head in the oven, the multiple personality disorder, the broken leg?), who has been battling bone cancer from a young age. There are mentionings of her father, so he was either abusive to her as a child or didn't know how to deal with her situation and just neglected her. All of this has caused alot of severe emotional problems for her, causing her to become annorexic, bipolar, abusive, and unable to accept being cared for by others. The narrorator is a hospital worker, possibly a male nurse, who falls in love with her and marries her. However their relationship is unhealthy, only getting worse as the cancer progresses. She becomes pregnant at one point but they decide to get an abortion (see "Bear"). As Sylvia comes closer to her death, she becomes more and more depressed and unstable. She finally refuses treatment altogether and invites death in, not allowing the narrorator stop her. This song is about a dream the narrorator has after her death, probably a few years later. I could be wrong, because it seems like an awful lot of misfortune for one person to undergo, but whatever the album is about it is beautiful and one of my favorite albums ever.

I just wanted to respond to some of the comments so far to clear up any confusion.

The story of the album is about a man who works at a hospital, falls in love with a bone cancer patient, marries her, and then watches her die. This song is about her haunting his memories. The song is about a real, physical death, but I suppose the listener can choose to use that as a metaphor for the emotional loss of a breakup if he or she wants to. The melody is the same as "Bear," which I think adds to the haunting theme.

I think when someone dies, people often tend to forget the negative and romanticize the positive. What I love about this song is we get to see just how depressed and abusive the deceased was when she was alive.

I've never lost anyone remotely close to me, but this song hits me harder emotionally than any song which I actually relate to. This whole album, really.

Just listened to the album from beginning to end. I feel like I just finished watching a very sad movie.

I just finished listening to this and I have no Idea what to do with myself. I'm an emotional wreck. Incredible.

This song was written by Peter Silberman not Peter Sullivan

This is brilliant. These guys are brilliant.

@ zxcvbnm852, I'm so glad you exist.

From what I've gathered, and from what has been stated by the author himself, the album is the story of a failing relationship, told allegorically from the perspective of a hospice worker watching a loved patient die, the worker desperate to see the patient live, fantasizing about becoming the patient, and in the end feeling as desperately lonely and sick as if they were the dying patient themselves, becoming the patient in the end.

You see him mix up themes in "Two", where he talks about rushed marriage, and combines that with the dream of her lying in a hospital bed, his patient, and "Bear" where he talks about how her abortion caused a rift between them. Sylvia Plath and Sylvia Bloch come up often because the stories written about the two mix the theme of hospice and relationship death even more: books have been written from the perspectives of the others in their lives, how living with a suicidal woman is like being a hospice worker, you are desperate for her health and for the health of your relationship. The link posted above gives a good example of just that feeling.

Here's what I took from this album:

They develop a fierce relationship. He slowly finds himself changing into the person he thinks she wants him to be, but the constant furious attacks are withering. He's the only one who is there for her, but she hated him from their first moments and she is enraged about the injustice of her illness, and her dependence on this stranger.

The relationship is becoming deeply unhealthy on both sides. He loves her, but hates how she has emotionally destroyed him. He is there as a sole witness to her last days and she loves him for his care, but they were always fundamentally incompatible, and worse, she knows on some level that he is taking her last days for his own. Once she's dead, he'll still have those memories that she had no choice but to give him.

Before she dies, she takes off her ring. She doesn't want him there, she wants him to move on forget her. He realises he never should have gotten involved in the first place and partly only tried so hard because he himself was weak and lonely too.

After she has died, he is haunted by the memory of her and his guilt over what he created. He loved and hated her, as she loved and hated him. It was so unbearable he feels like he died too, but it was still love.