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I wish that I had known in
That first minute we met
The unpayable debt
That I owed you
Because you'd been abused
By the bone that refused you
And you hired me
To make up for that
And walking in that room
When you had tubes in your arms
Those singing morphine alarms
Out of tune
They had you sleeping and eating
And I didn't believe them
When they called you
A hurricane thundercloud
When I was checking vitals
I suggested a smile
You didn't talk for a while
You were freezing
You said you hated my tone
It made you feel so alone
So you told me
I had to be leaving
But something kept me standing
By that hospital bed
I should have quit but instead
I took care of you
You made me sleep all uneven
And I didn't believe them
When they told me that there
Was no saving you
That first minute we met
The unpayable debt
That I owed you
Because you'd been abused
By the bone that refused you
And you hired me
To make up for that
And walking in that room
When you had tubes in your arms
Those singing morphine alarms
Out of tune
They had you sleeping and eating
And I didn't believe them
When they called you
A hurricane thundercloud
When I was checking vitals
I suggested a smile
You didn't talk for a while
You were freezing
You said you hated my tone
It made you feel so alone
So you told me
I had to be leaving
But something kept me standing
By that hospital bed
I should have quit but instead
I took care of you
You made me sleep all uneven
And I didn't believe them
When they told me that there
Was no saving you
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I hadn't even realized the reference that the title was making until I read the lyrics and realized they were about someone terminally ill (presumably with cancer), and the person who has to be besides them through it all, watching them. Only then did I realize that "Kettering" was referring to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center, a cancer center in New York where I spent every weekend of this past summer while my fifteen-year old cousin did her chemotherapy.
After that, I went out for a night walk and just played the song on repeat and let myself cry to it. It's so beautiful, in the heartbreaking and plaintive way that it is, and it speaks with the humanity of pain, the simplicity of suffering. I've listened to the whole album since then and I know it's created on a foundation of metaphors, interpretations and fluctuating depictions that each song somehow plays into. But even though ever other song in 'Hospice' is just as brilliant, 'Kettering' has become something entirely different to me than just a song. Because my cousin is a hurricane thundercloud girl, and so were all the other children and young adults I got to meet frequently in her ward. So thank you, to The Antlers, for writing this piece.
Even though "Prologue" is the technical prologue, this is the best introduction to the situation that there is: he's with a girl he knows he ought to not be with, the signs that they are going to end up not together are all there, but he stays with her. His friends plead with him, tell him that it's futile, but as he says in the last bit:
"You made me sleep all uneven
And I didn't believe them
When they told me that there
Was no saving you"
Also I have no idea what "Kettering" means, it doesn't seem to be an average word, but rather a pronoun. Interestingly there is a cancer centre with a similar name, I wonder if it may be related. See link below:
mskcc.org/
In Kettering, the patient refers to the girlfriend and the person taking care of her is him. He uses this metaphor to show how much he attended to her and how whipped he was. The metaphor is actually very brilliant.
this song is just so haunting and heartbreaking and beautiful.
The narrator tries to be distant and professional, "When I was checking vitals / I suggested a smile... You said you hated my tone / It made you feel so alone / So you told me / I had to be leaving" but this only hurts the other more. The "sleeping uneven" part could be, as others have said, sleeping beside the patient's bed, or it could be the narrator's guilt at not being able to save the patient.
I don't know, this is just my personal interpretation. I think this song has many different meaning to different people, and it speaks to me even though I have never had cancer, or known someone with cancer. Lovely song, heartbreaking album.
Beautiful but awful at the same time.
And I didn't believe them
When they called you
A hurricane thundercloud
Oh my god. That line makes me cry every time. It's like...how could someone go downward so fast? How could someone be fine, stable one minute, and then just crash?