While this song always moved me, I never closely studied the words before. It's back on the local Alt FM station rotation, and I sat in my car absorbing the pain yesterday, almost in disbelief at how apt the lyrics are to my variation of the universal theme. I'm seven decades invested in this life, and yet this resonates beyond the usual love song cliches. My love is for a woman nearly fifty years younger, who I'd bonded with in a rare and wondrous way over four months, as a surrogate father/mentor/confidant/co-counselor, not a lover, yet in an anxiety fueled tantrum, coming from deep in my own disfunctional history, I unleashed a cruel verbal outburst at her that shattered her trust in me. My abject apology was read, and her reply was earnest and heartbroken. Now, weeks of silence tell me she can't bear to consider forgiveness or reconciliation. She is young and naively has retreated into herself, not realizing that will scar and harden the wounds, when the only path any of us have to heal is to risk apologizing, forgiving the other, and seeing us all as flawed and imperfect humans who will keep making mistakes, over a lifetime, but have to keep putting our best selves out there regardless of how we get hurt, or far worse, how we inadvertently hurt those we love most. That this song perfectly conveys my greatest regret as well as young lover's partings shows the mysterious genius of great songs.