We're All Immortal, But Only Briefly

Dear Rachel,

I used to think you spent an awful lot of time “burning the candle at both ends,” as they say, and I’d worry about you and how long you could keep up with your dizzyingly busy schedule: work, mom-stuff, school, out with friends, more mom-stuff, internship, more school, more work, and on and on. I hoped you’d have enough sense to slow down before you burned out.

Now that metaphor no longer works. If I need a candle metaphor, I think instead about the “candle in the wind” comparison. A beautiful metaphor, really. It expresses perfectly both our fragility and the transitory nature of our existence. (To paraphrase Neil Peart: We’re all immortal, but only briefly.)

I wish that syrupy, cloying Elton John song hadn’t ruined the metaphor. Still, when “Candle in The Wind” first came out in 1973, the phrase—although already familiar to most of us—hadn’t yet been overused to the extent that it would be after we’d heard those opening lyrics (“Goodbye, Norma Jean. Though I never knew you at all….”) the first 1,200 or so times.

At the time, I thought the lyrics were beautiful, actually; haunting and poetic and true. But I never realized just how fragile it all really is until last May. Who knew the wind would blow so powerfully, and who knew it would rage so mercilessly? Who knew it would begin to blow so damned soon?

Love,

Dad