This week Jim Adams our talented host for Song Lyric Sunday has said that this week’s prompt is : November 17, 2019 – Did/Didn’t/Do/Don’t/Does/Doesn’t.
This week Jim’s prompt for us set me in mind of my dear friend Karen who died of cancer of the osphagus. We were close friends, I was not long out if hospital having broken my back badly , for the second time, when I got the news from Karen that she was ill.
The reason I have chosen Don’t stop me now by Queen will become apparent at the end of this post.
Don’t Stop Me Now” is a song by the British rock band Queen from their 1978 album Jazz and released as a single in 1979. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, it was recorded in August 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Berre-les-Alpes (Alpes-Maritimes), France, and is the twelfth track on the album. More information here.
I hope no one minds me making this so personal but this is Karen’s song.
To Karen
Karen
I rang her every day for over a year,
I begged to come see her but she would not let me near.
We laughed with each other but more often we cried.
I wanted to be with with her but her fears, this to me denied.
I begged her to fight it she told me she was tired
I nagged and bullied she said I was fired!
Things never got better she slipped from my grasp
I tried hard to see her but she still refused, so I did as she asked.
Then finally the day came and I got the call
At last I got to visit , not that she knew at all.
I talked of blue skies and beaches and clouds
I did not whisper I told her out loud.
She was struggling for breath then I caught her eye in a moment of clarity
I told her I loved her she flashed at me “no pity!”
Her hands were dirty her nails were lined black
Her pain and the squalor are the memories that keep coming back.
I spent four days in her company
I could not believe what I had to see.
I hated her suffering as she breathed her last,
Sadly these horrid memories stuck in my mind, the ones which I cannot get past.
It was a foggy freezing December day
When we all met at the Crematorium our goodbyes to say.
To a larger than life, loud colourful girl
Who with a flash of her eyes could set our working day in a whirl.
I sat there sobbing but she had to have the last word
“Get a grip you silly cow” were the words that I heard.
Then as her coffin disappeared for her final bow
She went out with a flourish to Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’.
Karen 1958 – 2010
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