Why?

There is a poignant arrangement of notes played on the piano and then a simple question: "Why?" I haven't heard this Annie Lennox song in the longest time. But as soon as I hear the first few notes, I'm catapulted back to February 2001. We're back from a brief weekend at home: back to school, back to life, but changed now. I'm walking into Alumni Hall for my biology class that I share with about five hundred other students. The professor has this habit of playing a mixture of popular classics and horrible golden oldies over the speaker system. The music usually welcomes us in and ushers us out: it's volume ensuring it can't be ignored.

I stop dead in my tracks when this song starts. I turn around slowly, and there's Carolyn, up about twenty rows, directly ahead of me. She has her feet on the chair ahead of her and she's wearing a neon sweatshirt. I can't recall if it's orange or green, but it's neon, I can remember that. It's only been a fragment of time since Al died and my breath catches in my throat as we share a glance. It only lasts a minute, but I feel a connection to her that I remember in my chest to this day. And one line haunts me, "I may be mad, I may be blind, I may be viciously unkind/ But I can still read what you're thinking." And I could read what she was thinking. We were both submersed in pain, sharing it over the rows of orange and maroon chairs.

I guess in retrospect, the song is about regret, an emotion I'd rather do without. As I get older though, there are moments I certainly do regret...just a few still, but they are there. They weren't there then though. The song was pure and only asked a simple question about why terrible things happen to people we know, people we love, people just like us. So now that I've accumulated a few regrets, now that I can look back and ask myself, "Why did you do that? Why did you let that happen?", the words mean a little more than they did then. I feel the same surge of emotion as I did on that cold day in London, but my past is different now. I'm not sure who I'd like to say these words to, and I'm not even sure if the song is appropriate, since the words reek of finality. After all, there is time for everything; maybe even ridding myself of my regrets.

"This is the book I never read

These are the words I never said

This is the path I'll never tread

These are the dreams I'll dream instead.

This is the joy that's seldom spread

These are the tears, the tears we shed

This is the fear, this is the dread,

These are the contents of my head.

And these are the years that we've spent

And this is what they represent

And this is how I feel

Do you know how I feel?

Because i don't think you know how I feel.

I don't think you know what I feel."