I think what makes this song so powerful is that yeah, he wrote this for a friend about her stillborn baby, but it could just as easily be about a failed relationship. The lyrics are ambiguous enough so that all you get, really, is the feeling of some sort of love - any sort of love - having prematurely died before it really had a chance to grow. You have descriptions of calculations and planning and expecting something great and not being able to let go of the fact that you just don't really have what you thought you would.
I think what makes this song so powerful is that yeah, he wrote this for a friend about her stillborn baby, but it could just as easily be about a failed relationship. The lyrics are ambiguous enough so that all you get, really, is the feeling of some sort of love - any sort of love - having prematurely died before it really had a chance to grow. You have descriptions of calculations and planning and expecting something great and not being able to let go of the fact that you just don't really have what you thought you would.