Deborah

This is one of the saddest, most inspirational, most deeply spiritual songs I've ever heard.

I literally broke down in tears near the end, when I first heard it.

I had been walking a religious pilgrimage, in Japan. Hour after hour, day after day, or devotional asceticism, punctuated by temple visits which provided an opportunity to meditate, recite sutras, and recall the blessings of the previous hours and days.

Listening to this song, during a long interlude along one of the rare and treasures mountain paths in Shikoku, I was blessed to envision the past and the future... and presented with a fully-formed and nearly mystical vision of someone I loved and had left behind me. The greatest mistake and regret of my life.

This song transformed this experience into a near-filmlike experience, seeing my dearest's past, babyhood, childhood, young adulthood, our love, and the struggle of our experience. And simultaneously, I witnessed the vision of a child we birthed, a child who does not and never will exist, who died in her early teens of a terrible childhood disease. This song painted a picture of a thousand, of a million fathers or mothers, uncles, or aunts, godfathers or godmothers, family friends... sitting at the grave of their beloved child, charge, sister, brother, niece, nephew, friend... it matters not... tearey-eyed, clinging to a letter their emotions demand be written, reading or feeling the contents of this letter before the gave... a letter which contains a photograph of the beloved family pet, who loved this lost soul so totally that she nearly starved in grief after her passing. The photo shows her newly-regained health and energy, playing in the sun. It's a thought that the still-mourning speaker and singer wants to communicate urgently to Deborah... to assuage her loss, guilt, angst...

Come the final quarter of the song, we see the sun is setting, the letter is wrinkled by grief-induced grasping, perhaps moistened by tears, sweat, humidity... the juice of existence. The sadness is indescribable. But through Vangelis' gentle and delicate piano at the end, the clouds break, the breeze blows...

She returns for the briefest of moments to console our despondent mourner, and the pall of death and sadness is lifted as only Jon and Vangelis can... to reveal the oneness of all of us... the unity of love. The timelessness of pain, caring, loss, and rebirth.

God bess you Vangelis, and please forgive Jon. He animated your music like few others could, perhaps only Irene Pappas gave your compositions the lyrical dignity they so desperately needed to touch people in this way. This song is a treasure. May it offer solace to others for centuries to come, may it arrive as accidentally and as unexpectedly for them, as it did for me. And may it connect with them in in a similarly deep and personal, and visionary way. It's that powerful.