If I just lay here…Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol

Daily Prompt: This Is Your Song

Take a line from a song that you love or connect with. Turn that line into the title of your post.

Chasing Cars

I heard this song for the first time in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy a couple of years ago.  The character Izzy had fallen in love with a patient that had a heart condition.  Part of the storyline was how far would you go for someone you loved?  Izzy did what many would say was wrong, but she loved him!

My husband had been dead for only about two months when I saw that episode.  I had not watched much TV the past few months because I was really just wandering around in a black fog.  I don’t know how or why I chose to watch this show, this episode, this time.   Maybe in my grief I just needed to see it.  To know that someone somewhere understands what misery I am in.

The character that Izzy loved ultimately died while she had gone to change into a wedding dress.  A wedding to be performed in the hospital.  During those scenes this song began to play….

I sobbed, while I watched Izzy realize her beloved had died. She crawled into his bed and just sobbed and sobbed. (about 3:40 mark in the video)

Her world as she knew it–as she dreamed her future would be–died too.  Her friends, fellow interns, could only stand and watch.  The pain is extreme and no words can ease it.

I thought, wow!  The directors or whoever is responsible for the production of this episode—this scene—got it just right!  The music and Izzy so emotionally destroyed she couldn’t function.  Eventually another character grabbed her off the bed and took her home.  Where she laid on the floor and sobbed some more—just broken.  They got it JUST RIGHT!  The emotions, the fear, the pain, the I’m going to lay on the floor here and don’t care what someone might think because it hurts so incredibly bad!!!  There are some of those scenes from that episode in the video above.

While my husband suffered from pancreatic cancer it was so painful that he couldn’t sleep in our bed any longer.  He could tolerate sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard for only a few minutes at best.  No matter how many pillows we used to prop him up, it was just too painful for him.  He slept in a large beanbag chair that a friend had given us.  Mike was a big man 6′ 3″ and about 240lb.  This chair was big enough that it allowed him to lounge comfortably, albiet in a mostly sitting position with his arms and legs supported.  I would sleep in our king-size bed while he slept in the corner of the room in that beanbag chair.  We became separate in a way; because of cancer.  Sleeping in the same room but separate is cold, harsh and lonesome.  We were physically separate but not emotionally.  It was hard to pretend everything was going to work out in a positive way.   That our sleeping apart became a necessity it did not make it easier for either one of us.

One night he just got up and got into bed.  He said, “I just want to lay here.  I want to forget about the cancer. I want to forget my mean parents in the other room. I just want to lay here with you and forget everything for a little while. I just want to lay in bed with you.” 

He just wanted to ignore everything else, to have that perfect moment between us and to forget all the bad things that was going on around us—to us…

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone
I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel
Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough

When you’re in love, “I love you” can’t fully express how you feel; especially when the one you love is dying.  It’s said too often, too casually, to give the full meaning that you have inside.

Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I think chasing cars is symbolic of how we may chase something but will never quite catch.  Maybe chasing cars is meant to conjure images of a dog chasing a car, in the spirit that it is endless, impossible and yet fun, hopeful and a bit crazy.

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

You find a peace, a goodness, a happiness in that person, you want to be able to find it inside yourself, so that they feel the same way with you.

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see

Could be metaphoric for you seeing yourself reflected in their eyes and you feel like you are a better because of them. Like you are even a part of them, and they are of you.

I don’t know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

You may not remember where or how you met them, but you know you love them and you know that you want to always love them.  You don’t know what is going to happen later, but you don’t want to stop being in love with them.

To this day I cannot hear this song and remain dry eyed.  Its the whole song really, not just the line:

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world

Snow Patrol-Chasing Cars 
Songwriters: LIGHTBODY, GARY / CONNOLLY, NATHAN / QUINN, JONATHAN GRAHAM / SIMPSON, TOM / WILSON, PAUL