I Never will Marry
trad
Some say that love is a gentle thing,
But it only has brought me pain,
And the only boy I ever did love
Is gone on that midnight train.
Chorus
I never will marry
I'll be no man's wife
I intend to live single
All the days of my life.
The train pulled out and the whistle blew
With a low and a lonesome moan.
He's gone, he's gone, like the midnight dew,
Left me all alone.
Chorus
The longest train I ever did see
Was sixteen coaches long,
And the only boy I ever did love
Was on that train and gone.
Chorus
What the Child is Saying
This is Jackson on the day Jay and the family was moving house. He is heartbroken. When his mother asks him why he’s so sad, he can only answer, “I broke my sandwich.”
I am reminded of a similar heartbreaking time when I was five or six years old.
I was staying with Grammy and Pappy and my four siblings were staying elsewhere, probably with Grandma and Grandpa. The reason was that my mother was due to have a baby. That was pretty exciting for me.
After two or three days, the time came to go and visit Mum. I followed my grandparents up the stairs, and stood in the doorway while they approached my mother and spoke to her. I soon realised that something was very wrong.
There was no baby. As I listened, I came to understand that the baby had been born dead.
I went to my room. I had left a tooth under my pillow for the tooth fairy. Hopeful of finding a coin in exchange for the tooth, I lifted the pillow. The tooth was still there.
I returned to the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, and as I stood there, the sadness overwhelmed me and the tears flowed. I didn’t cry out loud, but my whimpering attracted my father’s attention. He took me onto his lap and asked me what’s wrong, why was I sad?
“The tooth fairy didn’t come,” I told him.
It was all I could think of. I couldn’t articulate the deep sadness I was feeling, the totally alien concept of dealing with death, of my mother giving birth not to a living, warm, cute baby, but a blank, a nothing.
I don’t know if Dad or any of the other adults in the room heard what I was trying to say behind those words. I was confused, a little frightened, and very, very sad.
But Dad heard the words, and he reached into his pocket and gave me a quarter. I allowed myself to be mollified.
Back to Jackson. What he’s really saying is that his world is broken. This is the only home he’s ever known, and now he’s watching it being dismantled and taken away.
Me – the next day I walked to the drug store and bought myself a hot fudge sundae with my 25 cents. It was some consolation I suppose.
