Then as it was, then again it will be,
And though the course may change sometimes,
Rivers always reach the sea,
Blind stars of fortune, each have several rays,
On the wings of maybe, down in birds of prey,
Kind of makes me feel sometimes, didn’t have to grow,
But as the eagle leaves the nest, it’s got so far to go
Changes fill my time, baby, that’s alright with me,
In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be
TEN YEARS GONE, by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
Dedicated to Alexander Maxwell Grant (November 26, 1991 – March 6, 2011)
This is for you, Pal, Ten Years Gone.
When you first went away, I promised that I would keep what is between us between us, that I would not use my crushing sorrow as rhetorical device. While part of you has (nonetheless) poured out from me in these lines from time to time, I like to think I’ve lived up to this pledge.
But now, somehow, as your heroes conveyed in our title song, you are Ten Years Gone. And it devolves to me to mark the sad anniversary.
I do remember, when the doctor handed you to me for the first time, promising you that I’d help you figure it all out. I know I tried my best. I don’t believe I failed entirely. But there are many things I have yet to figure out myself.
Like what happened that night, a decade ago, when you went away.
And never came back.
And I never even got to say goodbye.
You disappeared on a stormy Saturday night. I learned of this on Sunday. They tell me that they found you on Tuesday, but I looked, and you weren’t there.
The same day, I was awarded a patent for a process that I had little to do with creating. Three days later, the angry gods unleashed a combined hurricane/tsunami on the nation of Japan.
Twenty thousand died, but I barely noticed. A few weeks later, they got Bin Laden. But I remember little of that either.
But I do remember you. You were full of life, full of promise, full of the promise of life. The unluckiest lucky young man on earth. You had some plans; you were making others. For the most part, you never had the chance to execute on them.
Something snapped. You faded to black.
Though I begged and begged, no one could (or would) give me any reason, any explanation.
I have felt, rightly or wrongly, that because of this, no one has celebrated you, that nothing, really or properly, memorializes your existence.
Strike that; there is a plaque with your name on it in a forlorn village in Rwanda.
Also, there’s this, which we made together, at a birthday party you attended when you were two years old.
I’d like to think that once in a while, your friends hoist one in your honor – but I’ve got no indication that they do.
I have some people in my world who think of you often, they are of the select, the few. I love them for this. But they are my people; not yours.
We had to carry on, somehow, without you. You have nephews now. Three of them. They know about you; we talk of you often; they love you. They told me so themselves.
Much has changed; much remains the same, in your Ten Years Gone. I often wonder what among it you would recognize, and even more so what you would not.
There’s more I could write, but I think, instead and for once, I’ll give my keyboard a rest.
And say now, at last, “Goodbye”.
GOODBYE