Listen to the song first. The music is as powerful as the words.
My famous last words
Are laying around in tatters
Sounding absurd
Whatever I try
But I love you
And that’s all that really matters
If this is goodbye
If this is goodbye
Your bright shining sun
Would light up the way before me
You were the one
Made me feel I could fly
And I love you
Whatever is waiting for me
If this is goodbye
If this is goodbye
Who knows how long we’ve got
Or what we’re made out of
Who knows if there’s a plan or not
There is our love
I know there is our love
My famous last words
Could never tell the story
Spinning unheard
In the dark of the sky
But I love you
And this is our glory
If this is goodbye
If this is goodbye
Read these lyrics like the lyrics of any other song and you would think they are just the ordinary words of longing and love that most of us feel for the person we are committed to.
But then add the awareness that these words were spoken by people who half-suspected but did not yet dare to believe that they would die very soon in the 9/11 attacks.
This song was constructed from phone messages left by people trapped in the Twin Towers or actually flying on planes which would soon go down. In their final moments on earth, they called the ones they loved to leave their “famous last words.”
If you listen to the song again, with that knowledge, the words are now almost unbearably painful, almost too sharp to endure. For they carry within them the realization of how fragile life really is and of how seldom we see it.
Who knows how long we’ve got
Or what we’re made out of
Who knows if there’s a plan or not
There is our love
I know there is our love . . .
On a plane overtaken by hijackers, in a burning tower with no escape in sight, it is easy – suddenly, blindingly – to see the truth. How did we miss it for so long? Everything else – literally everything else – fades to irrelevance. These are my last moments on earth. This is the only message I will leave. These are my “famous last words.”
The last words these people left were all so shockingly simple: I love you. | There is our love. | You were the one. | That’s all that really matters. |
Reading these messages, knowing all too well exactly what was waiting for them, spinning unheard in the dark of the sky (in the background of the song, you can hear the sirens screaming), my heart breaks. I choke back tears. I want to bring them all back to life, to change what was waiting for them, to stop the spinning and gather up the tatters.
And yet, I know – as we all know – that their reality is also our reality. We will not all die so publicly and very few of us will have songs written about the way we went. But we are all going to go. We will all speak our famous last words. We will all have the chance to experience that last blinding light of truth, that glory, that moment where we know: I love you. And that’s all that really matters.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait until I am in a burning tower to recognize it. I want to live the rest of my life in the light of that truth. Because, as Rumi said: “Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.”
