The Long Good-bye

I know they say if you love somebody
You should set them free
But it sure is hard to do
It sure is hard to do
I know they say if you don't come back again
Then it's meant to be (so they say)
Those words don't pull me through
Cause I'm still in love with you
I spend each day here waiting for a miracle
But it's just you and me goin' through the mill
climbin' up a hill

This is the long goodbye
Somebody tell me why
Two lovers in love can't make it
Just what kind of love keeps breaking a heart
No matter how hard I try
I always make you cry
Come on, baby, it's over let's face it
All that's happening here is a long goodbye

Sometimes I ask my heart did we really
Give our love a chance (just one more chance)
But I know without a doubt
We turned it inside out
And if we walked away
It would make more sense
But it tears me up inside
Just to think we could still try
How long must we keep running on a carousel
Goin' round and round and never getting anywhere
On a wing and prayer

This is the long goodbye
Somebody tell me why
Two lovers in love can't make it
Just what kind of love keeps breaking a heart
No matter how hard I try
I always make you cry
Come on, baby, it's over let's face it
All that's happening here is a long goodbye

Long goodbye
Long goodbye

Brooks and Dunn, "The Long Good-bye"


"The Long Good-bye" is a beautiful, sad, tender song, and it resonates, because most of us have felt the ache of the long good-bye at one time or another. It achieves an even deeper poignancy knowing the creators of the song are now enduring a long good-bye of their own. Brooks and Dunn are ending their collaboration this summer after twenty years of touring and writing and working together. Of course they'll have the consolation of a multi-million dollar farewell tour. Most of our farewell tours are far less rewarding.

The last stages of a long good-bye can be scary and disorienting and filled with hurt and sadness. It no longer matters why or who started it or who's right. It just hurts. The injuries won't go away and words fail. After a bitter fight you both retreat to other rooms and talk in strained careful voices. One person or the other makes other plans. You both start making mental lists, dividing things in your head, calculating options and deadlines. You imagine your life alone.

The issues don't matter anymore and we couldn't begin to take our own advice. The air is filled with tension and weariness and the fear of loss. Her sorrow and disappointment is so great there is nothing in the world he could say to begin to heal this or console her. You feel so defeated and diminished by the realities of the past that you could never believe your love is real or sustaining. Maybe she met another man, someone younger and better looking and a better lover. Maybe he retreated into his own world and started ignoring her feelings and needs. By now they don't care who is right or what they did wrong or why it happened. They just want to retreat and stop living hurt.

Of course bitterness is no answer and neither is packing up and leaving, even though sometimes it's more than necessary. In your new place, all the dynamics and deficits that brought you to ruin here will follow you. We can't escape ourselves. I can't escape the fear of conflict and defensiveness that make me inept in relationships, the compulsive urges to run and evade and retreat that trigger a fear of abandonment in the women I inevitably choose. We are condemned to repeat our patterns until we change them. Including the familiar desperation of the long good-bye. Life itself is a long good-bye, and if we're not careful our time will be gone without even saying a proper hello. If our days go ungreeted and our longings unmet, our last breaths will be taken alone. We have to be careful about our choices, because they write the script of our future.