The Saddest Song
Tom Mazanec
This song came out in 1968, when I was ten and just before my Mom died.

HONEY
See the tree, how big it's grown,
but friend, it hasn't been too long it wasn't big.
I laughed at her and she got mad,
the first day that she planted it was just a twig.
 
A tree does not grow from "just a twig" to "how big" in a day,
or even a year. This is a love that has lasted. And like another song
puts it "I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow".
 
Then the first snow came and she ran
out to brush the snow away so it wouldn't die.
  
Honey is a tender hearted person. I don't know if snow insulates a sapling from frost,
or weighs down and breaks it's branches, but she is the one who cares enough to try
and save the tree.

Came runnin' in all excited,
slipped and almost hurt herself, I laughed 'til I cried.
 
That is the kind of "dumb"(not "stupid") thing that anyone can do. Honey is becoming
a person you know, as the next couplet describes her.

She was always young at heart,
kind a dumb and kind a smart and I loved her so.
And I surprised her with a puppy,
kept me up all Christmas Eve two years ago.
 
I am not surprised. Christmas Eve is a common but wrong time to buy a puppy...
they are separated from their mothers at a time of household confusion.
But it shows how much he loves her. And Honey was alive just two years ago.
My boss told me, after my father died, that your heart does not grow out
of it, but grows around it. That is slowly happening to me, but it takes
more than a couple of years. And my hometown historian, now a widower, said
that losing a wife is far worse than losing a parent.
 
And it would sure embarrass her when
I came home from working late 'cause I would know
that she'd been sittin' there and cryin'
over some sad and silly late, late show.
 
Again, this shows Honey as a tender, compassionate person. Honey is not a condemned
prisoner like Tom Dooley or the singers of "Green Green Grass of Home" or
"I Just Gotta Get a Message To You" or a hormone struck teenager like the singers of
"Teen Angel" or "Last Kiss". 
 
And Honey, I miss you and I'm being good.
And I'd love to be with you if only I could.
 
Honey is in Heaven. He wants her to know that he is being good so he
can stop missing her and see her again some day.

She wrecked the car and she was sad
and so afraid that I'd be mad but what the heck.
 
Most people would be both mad about the car and relieved that the driver was unharmed.
Wrecking a car is a serious inconvienience in numerous ways. But he does not feel
conflicted at all. He does not care about the car, he is just glad that she is safe.
 
Though I pretended hard to be,
guess you could say she saw through me and hugged my neck.
 
Though he prentends to be mad at her, she is on the same wavelength and sees right
through him and hugs his neck. He only pretends because she scared him so, not because
of the car.
 
I came home unexpectedly
and found her crying needlessly in middle of the day.
 
Because my mother died of cancer and the family hid the seriousness of her situation
from me, I sometimes saw her crying without understanding why. I used to think that
this was because of a diagnosis. But I have changed my mind, since this would not
be "needless" crying.

And it was in the early spring
when flowers bloom and Robins sing, she went away.
 
Is there a more poignant time to die? Here in Cleveland, the early spring brings
and end to months of being stuck indoors because of the foul weather. It is the
most wonderful time of the year.
 
And Honey, I miss you and I'm being good.
And I'd love to be with you if only I could.
One day while I was not at home,
while she was there and all alone, the angels came.
 
Is this remorse for being away when she died? If the above had been a bad diagnosis,
surely she would have died in a hospital (as my Mom did), or at least with him there.
And a lonely death must be a hard one.
 
Now all I have is memories
of Honey, and I wake up nights and call her name.
 
He only has memories of her. Who doesn't have some loved one as only memories?
And he wakes up and calls her name. Even I don't do that in my deepest mourning.
 
Now my life's an empty stage
where Honey lived and Honey played and love grew up.
 
At school, we would have school plays (I never took part myself, but would enjoy them).
Then we would have gym class in the same room. There was something vaguely depressing
about the empty stage, when the play is all over. This is a very powerful image to me.

And a small cloud passes over head
and cries down in the flower bed that Honey loved.
 
I had to sell the house I lived in all my life and move to an apartment.
It wasn't the money, or the headache of maintenance (though those helped).
It was the fact that everything there reminded me of Dad. It was like living in his tomb.
I can deeply sympathise with the singer's emotions. And a crying cloud is such a 
powerful image.
 
And see the tree, how big it's grown...(fading)
- Bobby Russell
 
The song ends tthe same way it begins, making an infinite loop . And it is very simple,
musically, making it the perfect "earworm", a song that repeats endlessly in your mind.
This is one of the few songs that can make me cry, and the others (like "Moon River")
are for personal reasons.

DRIZZLE DRAZZLE DRUZZLE DROME
TIME FOR THIS ONE TO COME HOME