Siblings Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Un-Sound

And to catch the light in you
To be celebrated
Try to pull the time behind you forward
Bends and breaks you
In the early morning stopped
By the ever ticking clock
Not the clicking when the hands move
But the absence of a sound in between
Un-do, un-settled, un-easy
Can you feel it?
It's the opposite of peace
Un-safe, un-connected, un-protected
Understand?
It's the plan
And it's something
But it's nothing if you never let it go

And your kids are getting older now
And you're getting old
And your friends have all come over
And your kids are drinking
And they're celebrating life with you
Almost everybody's there
And your kids are drinking
And your kids are drunk

Siblings on the stairs
Drunk and fighting while your parents
Try to understand the role they played in getting there
And she's standing on the landing
And her head is in her hands
While her children shout and try to push each other down
Do you understand it now?

It's that tension underneath
From the absence in between
An undercurrent tunneled into nothing
And besides it's life
It's fine
It's life
It's fine
It's life
It's fine
It's fine
It's fine
It's life
It's fine
It's fine

It’s the un-sound beneath that keeps us down

In the background all around
Over every moment now
What we've left and what we lack
All you can do is drown it out
Don't you hear it?
Un-relenting, un-forgiving, un-impeded
When it's peaceful
Don't you feel it
Pulling back?

Now

The clock continues ticking
And the aching never fades
There's no option to rewind it back
To break or change it
To see between each beat the love you gave
Un-afraid and un-ashamed
Un-abated by the weight
Un-believable to be

And your kids have gotten older now
They've got children of their own
Your whole families coming over
It's a birthday party
And they pull up in the driveway
And you're standing on the porch
When your grandkids see you waiting
They come running

And we stumble to the end
It's the effort we put in
To see how difficult it is to just exist and to survive
There's beauty and there's anguish tangled helplessly inside
What a miracle it is we get to be alive

Do you recognize it now?
It’s a fucking complicated thing
Joy and grief and in between
A universal burden over all of us from birth until we die
It’s a struggle and we stumble
And the best that we can ever do is try

That's life
That's life
We love and we rely
On the beauty we can find
To make it through

That's life
We give a purpose to what's left before we die
And we die because it's life

And we fall short all the time
While the clock keeps ticking onward in behind
And the absence never leaves us
But it's fine
It's just life
It's just life