When the tears come streaming down your face 'Cause you lose something you can't replace When you love someone but it goes to waste Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones
Fix You, Coldplay
I realise my chosen lyrics for today’s reflection are particularly un-christmassy. They’re beautiful in a funereal sort of way. However, this song felt like a natural choice after yesterday’s post looking at the tragedy hidden within the nativity story. Grief is not often a focus of our conversations around the Christmas period. And yet for many people it can be an especially painful time of year, when the loss of loved ones is felt even more acutely.
These lyrics point to one of life’s biggest mysteries, the question of love and loss. Can love ever go to waste? It’s a question that lies at the heart of BBC’s comedy-drama Fleabag (yes another random, un-christmassy reference!) In series 2, there’s a poignant scene where Fleabag is talking about the death of her mother and she says,
I don’t know what to do with it…With all the love I have for her. I don’t know where to put it now.
The beauty of Coldplay’s song is the way it speaks truthfully about the deeply confusing experience of grief and yet it also brings us to a place of hope: “lights will guide you home.” There’s the suggestion here that death may not be the end. Indeed, if love is eternal then it can never go to waste. And this is the hope we sing about at Christmas:
Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light.
(O Little Town of Bethlehem)
This is part of my LittlePonderings series: "Unseasonal Songs: An Alternative Advent in Song Lyrics". You can find out more here.
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