I knew this song for a long while before I began to feel an encroaching sense of the absent wife. Probably died, given how young are the children. Then the emotions come in a rush: Uncle Frank and Auntie May are no longer a lonely old couple, but concerned relatives; the light is left on for the benefit of the narrator, not the children; and an awareness that the singer is part talking to himself rather than the children.
Then the song becomes overwhelming, and we empathise with his grief because we sense it, rather being told. A wonderful song. Unpretentious, full of compelling detail, devastatingly emotional, and delivered in an authentic and original voice.
I knew this song for a long while before I began to feel an encroaching sense of the absent wife. Probably died, given how young are the children. Then the emotions come in a rush: Uncle Frank and Auntie May are no longer a lonely old couple, but concerned relatives; the light is left on for the benefit of the narrator, not the children; and an awareness that the singer is part talking to himself rather than the children.
Then the song becomes overwhelming, and we empathise with his grief because we sense it, rather being told. A wonderful song. Unpretentious, full of compelling detail, devastatingly emotional, and delivered in an authentic and original voice.