It Must Have Been The Roses Lyrics

Lyric discussion by spiv 

Cover art for It Must Have Been The Roses lyrics by Grateful Dead

This is a song about a man who lost his wife, but couldn't bear to leave her at the funeral parlor so he brought her home. Ten years on and his house is in ill repair and nobody from town visits the old man and his sun bleached corpse of a wife.

@spiv That's an interesting and plausible take but it doesn't explain why he is making a confession after ten years at sea.

He wasn’t at sea, 10 years the waves... just shows the passage of time... as does the fading of the ribbons.