Hold my Hand (While You Let Me Go)
It happened to a nurse-friend of mine: Her husband – her childhood sweetheart, the love of her life, and father of three – got into a horrible auto accident and was on life support in the intensive care unit in the same hospital where my friend worked. I wondered what her dying husband might say if he could speak some final words to his loving wife; words that would help her feel more comfortable about making a most difficult and deeply sorrowful decision, a decision that would ease his final moments of pain and suffering and help him on his way; words to tell her it was okay for her to authorize the removal his life-support machines so he could die in peace. These might be those words.
Asia Cottom, 11, was on American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles when the plane crashed into the Pentagon with 64 people aboard. Asia was a student at Backus Middle School in Washington where her father coached basketball, patrol the halls and serve as a book clerk. Asia was selected to take a trip to California with a teacher to participate in a National Geographic Society ecology conference. This song is for Asia and her Daddy.
I always write, play and sing songs with someone in mind. This song is no exception: 30-plus-year friend Cathy Pelley, hospital CEO with whom I have had the pleasure to work on many occasions, shares a passion with me: Neil Diamond. His voice was in my spirit when I wrote the song, but so was the voice of many of the musicians and rock groups who have been my inspiration all these years just like Cathy.
Can we see as far into the future as we can see when we look into the past?
Will we know what makes us happy; Will each life be made to last
Written and produced by Papa Hardy for the late Great Aunt Mary of Amsterdam, Holland, philanthropist supporting protection of the historical Dutch buildings, protection of the wild birds in Northern Holland, and donor of the world’s largest foster child program. Great Aunt Mary’s husband was the president of the Dutch Supreme Court for 40 years, through two world wars and part of the Dutch underground during both wars.
This song is a tribute to Nobel prize winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose life and survival of a Siberian Gulag (prison camp) “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” helped bring down the communist regime. This song is specifically about life and work in “The First Circle”, and about love between the protagonist and a patient in “Cancer Ward”.
No apologies: My spirit is comprised of equal parts romantic and realist, but when writing songs I am usually either one or the other. This song is a case in point for the former part and as such is dedicated to my starmate, Jennifer.
This one’s to my wife of 43 years and for my friend forever (one and the same.) None of it is true except for the ‘love’ part. That’s what romantic ‘anything’ is all about: It’s just a fluttering of universally accepted nonsense whose shallow meanings are as deep as ye’ need to go.