The Child We Lost 1963 Lyrics - Rooms Of The House - La Dispute

There were shadows in the bedroom 

Where the light got thrown by the lamp on the nightstand 

On your mother's side, after midnight, still 

You can see it all 

You can see it all 

And the closet in the corner 

On the far back shelf with the keepsakes, she hid 

That box there full of letters of regret 

By the pictures of the kids 

You get faint recollections of your mother's sigh, countryside drive 

And the landscape seen from the window of the backseat with some flowers in a basket 

That afternoon after school you and your older sisters 

Found your parents in the kitchen at the table 

Father lifting off the lid of the box 

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And a hush fell over everything like a funeral prayer 

A reverence, ancestral, heavy in the air 

Though you didn't understand what it meant 

That they never said her name aloud around you 

Even sitting at the table with her things they'd kept 

You recall faintly cards, tiny clothes, and the smell of the paint in the upstairs bedroom 

Until then you didn't know that's what the box had held 

Your parents tiptoeing slowly around always speaking in code 

No, they never said her name aloud around you 

Only told you it was perfect where your sister went 

And you didn't understand why it hurt them so much then that she'd come and left so soon 

Could only guess inside your head at what a "stillbirth" meant 

Only knew that mother wept 

You watched while father held her, said "Some things come but can't stay here." 

You saw a brightness. Like a light through your eyes closed tight then she tumbled away. 

Photos 

From here, some place 

To remain in the nighttime shadows she made 

To be an absence in mom, a sadness hanging over her 

Like some pentacostal flame, drifting on and off 

She was "Sister," only whispered. 

Sometimes "Her" or 

"The Child We Lost." 

You were visions 

A vagueness, a faded image 

You were visions 

You were a flame lit that burned out twice as brightly as the rest of us did 

When you left, you were light, then you tumbled away 

There are shadows that fall still here at a certain angle 

In the bedroom on the nightstand by your mother's side 

From the light left on there 

There's the box in the closet, all the things kept 

And the landscape where she left 

Flowers on the grave, marble where they etched that name 

And mother cried the whole way home 

But she never said it once out loud 

On the way back home from where you thought they meant 

When they said where sister went 

After grandpa got hospice sick and he couldn't fall sleep 

They wheeled his stretcher bed beside her at night 

And I saw the light 

On the day that he died 

By their bed in grandma's eyes 

While us grandkids said our goodbyes 

She said "don't cry" 

Somewhere he holds her 

Said a name I didn't recognize 

And the light with all the shadows combined