Driving to work in silence again I said a prayer for my daughter, Cindy. I asked God to please let me know what to say to her, to find words or deeds that could help her in her suffering. I immediately turned on the radio and heard a new song by George Canyon. Since August, the constantly playing radio had been silent with the exception of a hand full of times so many songs were new to me. I listened:
I Want You To Live by George Canyon
When she got the news
The phone hit the floor
She fell to her knees,
And cried his name
He had just kissed her lips,
And both of the kids
Their lives will never be the same
The end of her hardest day
The only words she could say were,
I want you to live,
I want you to love,
I want to go back to the way it was,
To hear you say my name again,
I want to see you smile again
I want you to live
It takes all of her strength
To go through his things
It feels like she’s holding him again
The letters he wrote, books that he’d read
And some of his shirts still had his scent
The picture in Florida
She holds to her heart and cries out loud
I want you to live,
I want you to love,
I want to go back to the way it was,
To hear you say my name again,
I want to see your smile again,
Lying awake in the middle of the night
Trying not to let the kids hear her cry
She prays for an answer, some little of sign
And closes her eyes
And swears she hears him say,
I want you to live,
I want you to love
I want you to go on and not give up
I want you to live,
I want you to try,
I want you to know that I’m alright
I want you to fall in love again
I want to see you smile again
And again,
I want you to live
This song was almost written for us. The grief had physically knocked Cindy to her knees. We found letters in Ty’s things that he wrote us and letters he saved that we had written to him. We looked through pictures of our trip to Florida. It was almost Ty saying to his sister, “I want you to live,Cindy”
