Twistin’ lemons into lemonade
It’s s’posed to help but all I feel is pain
The acid runs into my throat
I cry for all I’ll never know
And all the people I won’t see again

Cause all the time you spent with me
and all that you will never be
Floods my mind
Every time

Cause life goes on
Even when you’re gone
And time won’t stop
Just cause you do
But my heart stopped the day we lost you

I know you’d tell me hold my head up high
You’d laugh at all the things that make me cry
You’d throw your head back and you’d say
That dying’s what we’ll do someday but
We never knew, it’d come so soon

Cause life goes on
Even when you’re gone
And time won’t stop
Just cause you do
But my heart stopped the day we lost you

Hallelujah
We were never ones to pray
But I talk to the stars and hope you’re listening some way
I scream at all the powers that be to give a reason why
Why pluck out such promise from this life?

Cause life goes on
Even when you’re gone
And time won’t stop
Just cause you do

No, life goes on
Even when you’re gone
And time won’t stop
Just cause you do
But my heart stopped the day we lost you

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

  Acoustic video from “Live from The Castle” session coming soon…

2020 was a hard year for everyone; for me, it meant moving out of NYC, going through an awful breakup, and being away from all of my friends and a sense of normalcy. Of course, the universe didn’t think that we had been through enough, so on August 19, 2020, one of my best friends from college passed away unexpectedly – at 25. She had been diagnosed with cancer earlier in the summer and had been going through treatment – which was working! But in some cruel fluke, she had a hole in her heart that couldn’t be seen on any scans, as it was blocked by the cancer. As treatment worked on shrinking the cancer, it exposed the hole in her heart which caused her sudden death. What was saving her ended up being the reason she died.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully process this loss. This was my first real loss, and it was made worse by the fact that it was someone who wasn’t supposed to die, not that young. What made it even more difficult was that none of us could be together to grieve. We were spread across the country avoiding Covid.. no one was able to say goodbye or be there when they buried her.

Since then, I’ve tried to write a lot of songs about her. She was special – one of those people that brings everyone else around her together. She had a biting, dry wit, the most beautiful singing voice, and the loudest, most infectious laugh. If she was still alive, she would be on Broadway by now, that’s how talented she was. But she didn’t get that time or chance. So far, no song I’ve written has really captured her, done her justice, or truthfully portrayed the experience that my friends and I all went through losing her.

The Day We Lost You is the closest I’ve gotten. I love the song – I cry every time I listen to any version of it. It has little easter eggs hidden in it that only she, or our closest friends, would understand. But it’s still not perfect. I’ll probably keep trying to write the perfect song until the day I myself die. 

But I think it’s an apt comparison to grief – one doesn’t grieve and then finish grieving. Grief is ongoing, and never-ending. We may find closure for those that we’ve lost, but we’ll never be done grieving, because there will always be something that reminds you of them and resurfaces the pain. So just as my grief in losing her will never end, never will my attempt to capture her in song.