I wrote the poem that became We’re Never Gone in 2010. It is about the mystery of death and the question death leaves behind.
One day, our friend or someone we love is here. Then, suddenly, that person is gone.
But are they really?
This song, like much of my writing, has a lived story behind it. Interestingly, some of the poems I felt least confident about have become some of the most touching songs. Perhaps that is because they were lived before they were written. They came from somewhere deep within the heart and mind, before I knew whether the words themselves were worthy.
I wrote this poem for a dear friend named Barbara while she was making her way toward the other side.
In the mid-1990s, Carol and I lived in a small, rustic seaside village in the Northwest, remote and far from the cities where most commerce and employment could be found. Barbara and her husband, Michael, were among our closest friends.
Barbara was an accomplished painter and a hairdresser from England. Michael was a physically powerful, no-nonsense Scot with a thick accent, a vise-like grip, and a quick wit. We shared many dinners together—a little wine for the ladies, a measure of Scotch whisky for the men, plenty of food, sharp humor, and the comfortable conversation of people who had come to know one another well.
During that period, Carol and I passed through a profoundly difficult season. We never asked Barbara and Michael for help. They simply understood.
Without announcement or explanation, they began including us at their dinner table nearly every night. This continued for a few months until things picked up again for Mike.
They never made a performance of their generosity or made us feel diminished by receiving it. They offered us more than meals: they gave us companionship, dignity, and the assurance that we were not facing life alone.
Sometimes friends become family in the deepest meaning of the word. Barbara and Michael were that kind of family to us.
Circumstances and employment eventually called us away from our friends and the coastal village. We missed the people and the life we had known there, although we did not miss its economic isolation. In time, we returned to the Northwest, settling farther inland.
Several years later, we learned that Barbara had become gravely ill with leukemia. She was receiving treatment near our new home, several hours from the village by the sea.
Between treatments, Barbara sometimes stayed with us. Carol remained closely beside her, providing companionship, care, and emotional support as the illness and its treatment gradually weakened her.
One evening, it became apparent that Barbara might not remain in her body much longer.
I sat in my study wanting desperately to thank her. I wanted her to know that Carol and I understood what she and Michael had done for us. I wanted her to know how deeply we loved and appreciated her—and that whatever happened, she would never be forgotten.
Words could not heal her body, alter the course of the disease, or repay the kindness she had shown us. Still, words were what I had to give.
So I wrote this poem.
I gave it to Barbara with considerable trepidation. It was heartfelt, but I did not know whether it was good enough. Perhaps no words could have seemed adequate in the presence of what was happening.
That evening, Barbara’s condition worsened considerably. She returned to the hospital, and Michael came from the coast to be with his wife. Barbara was eventually able to return to their village by the sea, where she passed into the great mystery not long afterward.
Michael survived her for many years. He passed from this life nearly three years ago.
The poem I originally wrote for Barbara has now become a song dedicated to them both.
Death removes from our sight a body, a face, a familiar voice, and the physical presence through which we knew someone. Yet kindness continues to act long after the person who offered it has disappeared from view.
Barbara and Michael’s kindness helped sustain Carol and me when the ground beneath our lives had given way. It became part of us. It became memory, then a poem, and now a song that can carry something of them into the lives of people they never met.
Perhaps that is one answer to the mystery.
Perhaps love does not vanish. Perhaps what we give to one another continues moving through the world, taking forms we could never have anticipated.
And perhaps, in that sense, we’re never truly gone.