Here, the speaker and the addressee are sharing a path, but the grief accompanying the path is not experienced together. While I would challenge a view of grief as an intensely personal, idiosyncratic and inevitable process (when in fact, for example, we learn how to grieve, and there are socially sanctioned right ways and wrong ways), the dominant view of grief as one makes the final lyric so affecting. It would not resonate the same way if grief were already thought of as shared socially.
So, the speaker suggests, we are in this together because of what we share, which does not extend to how we each cope with something ending. The lyrics could serve as an explanation or defense of one's own behavior in light of this ending. Grieve your own way, and I will mine.
Here, the speaker and the addressee are sharing a path, but the grief accompanying the path is not experienced together. While I would challenge a view of grief as an intensely personal, idiosyncratic and inevitable process (when in fact, for example, we learn how to grieve, and there are socially sanctioned right ways and wrong ways), the dominant view of grief as one makes the final lyric so affecting. It would not resonate the same way if grief were already thought of as shared socially.
So, the speaker suggests, we are in this together because of what we share, which does not extend to how we each cope with something ending. The lyrics could serve as an explanation or defense of one's own behavior in light of this ending. Grieve your own way, and I will mine.