Jonatha Brooke - "In The Gloaming"
This song is actually a folk song, a Scottish-influenced dirge of lost love. Having never been in love (and therefore, having never had that sort of love to lose), I find it easier to apply it to something I have lost; namely, friendship.
When the trees are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe
My best friend in grade school (and really, my best friend for most of my childhood) was a girl named Bridgette. She and I were special, I thought. She lived next door to my grandma, and when we visited Grandma Newton, I always managed to sneak over and play at her house. Her parents were tolerant of my presence; a bit of a scaredy cat, I helped keep Bridgette from going too far, too fast. And my parents liked Bridgette, who helped me be braver by the virtue of running ahead of me. (Despite all my dad’s best efforts to teach me, it was Bridgette who finally convinced me to ride a bike without training wheels when she learned.)
After school, I’d sneak over as often as possible—if my parents couldn’t find me, they could call Bridgette’s and 9 times out of 10, they’d find me there. We had other friends—Bridgette was a veritable social butterfly in grade school, and I hadn’t yet learned just how mean children could be—but my best friend was always Bridgette.
In fifth grade, something about my friend changed. The girl who lived so loudly, bravely, and honestly became alternately moody, rebellious, and timid as time passed. She wasn’t interested in talking, or playing cards, or listening to the same music that she’d enjoyed before. She didn’t laugh as much as she had before; in fact, she hardly laughed at all. Days would go by with the two of us only talking about something we were learning, and she stopped sharing details with me. (Older and wiser now, I know that these are classic symptoms of depression. At the time, I had no idea what was going on.) I tried to compensate by talking more, but I’m not a natural conversationalist, and I faltered when she confessed that she’d hidden pills in her room and given serious thought to swallowing all of them.
I didn’t just falter; I failed. She asked me to keep her secret, and I did. As a consequence, I went to sleep every night wondering if I’d have a best friend in the morning, and woke up every morning terrified that my mom would hug me and cry a little as she told me that Bridgette had been taken to the hospital, or worse, was dead. I cried a lot, and woke up from horrible nightmares where I’d found her body or sat through her funeral.
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go
In the last months of our friendship, Bridgette and I ran out of things to say to one another. The loss of the greatest friendship I’d had in my life didn’t go out with a scream and a crash; it slunk out the door with its tail between its legs, as if it were ashamed. Secrets crept between us; I didn’t know that she’d started experimenting with pot, she didn’t know that I’d stopped talking to my family and sometimes slept in the unfinished basement to get away from them. “The quiet shadows” came, but never really went away.
In the gloaming, oh my darling
Think not bitterly of me
Though I've passed away in silence
Left you lonely, set you free
For my heart was tossed with longing;
What had been could never be
It was best to leave you thus, dear
Best for you and best for me
Bridgette didn’t only leave me behind; she left behind all those things that made her my friend. The child-like wonder and sense of adventure were gone, replaced by sarcasm and cynicism in a girl too young to feel so old. While anger and desperation filled me up, Bridgette’s passions dried up and went away. We could never go back to the way things were; both of us had changed too much. And we continued to change. I made new friends, learned to talk to people besides Bridgette; Bridgette made new friends as well, learned to hide her pain so well that I only guessed at its massive weight when she left for good.
I’d always suspected it would happen eventually, really. She grew to hate her parents too much for not seeing what she was going through to be willing to stay with them any longer than necessary. So as soon as she turned 18, Bridge left home for good, and moved to Indiana to be with people who, if they didn’t see her pain, at least had the excuse of not knowing her before it existed.
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
I held on for an embarrassingly long time. And I still think back with achingly sweet memories of the girls we were, back when depression wasn’t real, and suicide was a foreign word. Such a big part of my life was invested in loving Bridgette, needing Bridgette, and being protected by her bright spirit and easy bravery. An equal amount of time has been spent wishing that I could have done something different, could have made a difference, because maybe then she wouldn’t be gone so far away, beyond my reach as she never was when she ran ahead.
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go
When the trees are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
In the gloaming, oh my darling
Think not bitterly of me
Though I've passed away in silence
Left you lonely, set you free
For my heart was tossed with longing;
What had been could never be
It was best to leave you thus, dear
Best for you and best for me
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
Will you think of me and love me
As you did once long ago?
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