On this Thanksgiving

This song is beautiful in its construction.  The beginning verse starts with love hurting us.  Who hasn't been there?!  And verse two changes the image to love healing us.  Hopefully, everyone has experienced that too.  The contrasts show the two sides of love well enough, but the balance is not even.  The memories were made by two people and the photograph shows the two people never closing their eyes, never breaking the other's heart, and staying in love forever.  Beautiful.

The rhythm is very steady.  The drumbeat is a continuous beating of the toms, so by the time the main line comes, everyone is expecting it - Wait for me to come home.  That's a contrast in itself  - continuous beating, then the word "Wait."  And without a doubt the drum beat represents the heart beat.  Explicitly the song states that the photograph should be kept next to the heartbeat where it (the beat of hearts and the emotional connection of one heart to another) resonates deep within the soul of the person.

And then there's the icing on the cake.  There is the promise never to let go accompanied by a remembered kiss, a whisper through the phone, and the words, "Wait for me to come home" accentuated by the silence that follows.  The silence is for effect.  It symbolizes that there is an eternity afterwards.  But, it is an eternity where love is, where the heartbeat is, where the soul is.  The eternity is with the person whose voice was on the phone.

I have this photograph.  On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful... into eternity.