If You're Lucky

Robert James

Simple enough, musically. Just a little 6/8 swing. I tend to go here when I am writing a bunch of songs at once. There are probably 20 little 6/8 swingers in either Aminor or Eminor buried here on my alonetone account.

The lyrics though… this one bothered me. My step son was recently taken very ill and spent some time in the hospital. The whole experience, especially the first night in the emergency room, is the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. It was worse than when we found out my mother had a brain tumor. Worse than my uncle bleeding to death. By far the most helpless terror I’d ever felt. I found myself writing these lyrics and the whole time I was thinking that this was too public an airing of my feelings from those few days. I couldn’t stop myself though. It was a weird state of mind, I tell you.

As I was getting toward the end of the song though, I started thinking about a friend who lost a child a few years ago. What the hell was I complaining about? My step son is fine. He’s home. He goes to school. He just became a teenager. He gets to live his life. My friend’s son doesn’t. He went into the hospital at age seven and never came out. I have no right to be telling the story of how scared I was when our ending was so infinitely happier than my friends. Once I started looking at things from that point of view I started feeling like an asshole. You putz, you’re the lucky one. You’ve been the lucky one the whole time. Even when you were sitting in the hospital, frozen with fear for your step son’s life, you were the lucky one.

Chorus:

You’ll never be
As scared as we were
You’ll never feel
that kind of fear

You’ll never know
How close you can come
If you’re lucky
You’ll never feel this way

Verse 1:

Look at him lie there
Helpless as can be
How did he get here
What does it all mean

Verse 2:

What are they saying
I don’t understand this
Everything’s crazy
So much to deal with

Ending:

He pulled through
its all right now
Life has changed
But it’s okay

think back to
how it was for you
I don’t know
what I would do

It could have been worse
I keep telling myself
As bad as it was
it’s all right now

He gets to go home
He gets to go on
Maybe it’s us
The lucky ones