This is the first time ever that I fell in love with a song that I COULDN'T BEAR listening to it for another time. Gotta admit that I'm an emotional mess but with lyrics like THAT -- An honest & devastating true account of a mother dealing with heartbreak and loss of a 4 y.o. child to terminal cancer -- it's just too painful to swallow, even for non-parents like us, as if we could paint the scenes out and really feel the heartache. Nothing is sadder than losing one's child and there's nothing one can do about it.
This tear-jerking ballad is about a boy named Ronan, who succumbed to stage four neuroblastoma cancer just three days shy of his 4th birthday in May 2011. His mother, Maya Thompson, chronicled his journey fighting the cancer through blog posts in rockstarronan, and when all hope is vain, it turned into a mum's grieving platform.
Thompson's heartfelt posts caught Taylor Swift's attention and touched her so much that she wrote a song for Ronan, almost entirely using those honest & heartfelt words of Thompson in her blog posts (hence crediting her as co-writer of the song), crafting this incredibly heart-felt song. With lyrics like:
'I remember your bare feet down the hallway/I remember your little laugh/Race cars on the kitchen floor/Plastic dinosaurs/I love you to the moon and back'
-- who could blame you for bawling your eyes out? And the lyrics of the chorus:
'Come on baby with me/We're gonna fly away from here/Out of this curtained room in this hospital/We'll just disappear/Come on baby with me/We're gonna fly away from here/You were my best four years'
-- according to Thompson, are some of the last words she whispered to Ronan before he passed away in her arms.
I thought nothing could top NewSong's 'The Christmas Shoes', and boy I was so wrong. I was already a mess the first time I watched Swift's debut performance of this song at SU2C last week (Stand Up To Cancer, a telethon charity event in US to raise funds for cancer research), got all choked up halfway through. Now thinking about it for too long will also cause some emotional tides within, and I don't even dare to read the mum's blog coz I know it will get worse from there.
I highly recommend this song. Read the lyrics -they are POIGNANT and POWERFUL, a mum's devastatingly heartfelt words to a departed son, told though Thompson's perspertive -; get to know the back story, get to know Maya Thompson and her boy Ronan, the boy with a pair of the most beautiful blue eyes, get to know the cancer, and then the song --- the aptly titled "Ronan".
Mad props to Taylor Swift for reaching out to the Thompsons and composing this hauntingly beautiful song to keep his memories alive, and raising awareness about pediatric cancer to the public. It's also worth to note that all proceeds of this single sales are 100% going to cancer charities.
Maya Thompson's blog --- rockstarronan.com
Her letter to Swift, written from Ronan's perpestive --- http://rockstarronan.com/2011/10/22/a-love-letter-to-taylor-swift/
Watch below: Taylor Swift's performance of RONAN at SUTC.
Keep some Kleenex nearby, you may need it.
Hope you'll like it as much as I do =)
RONAN Lyrics
Written by Taylor Swift & Maya Thompson
I remember your bare feet down the hallway
I remember your little laugh
Race cars on the kitchen floor
Plastic dinosaurs, I love you to the moon and back
I remember your blue eyes looking into mine like we had our own
secret club
I remember you dancing before bed time then jumping on me waking
me up
I can still feel you hold my hand
Little man, from even that moment I knew
You fought it hard like an army guy
Remember I leaned in and whispered to you
Chorus:
Come on baby with me
We're gonna fly away from here
You were my best four years
I remember the drive home when the blind hope
Turned to crying and screaming, "Why?"
Flowers piled up in the worst way
No one knows what to say about a beautiful boy who died
And it's about to be Halloween
You could be anything you wanted if you were still here
I remember the last day when I kissed your face
I whispered in your ear
Come on baby with me
We're gonna fly away from here
Out of this curtained room in this hospital
We'll just disappear
Come on baby with me
We're gonna fly away from here
You were my best four years
What if I'm standing in your closet trying to talk to you?
What if I kept the hand me downs you won't grow into?
And what if I really thought some miracle would see us through?
But what if the miracle was even getting one moment with you
Come on baby with me
We're gonna fly away from here
Come on baby with me
We're gonna fly away from here
You were my best four years
I remember your bare feet down the hallway
I love you to the moon and back
R.I.P. Ronan
