I think this song is about lovers, one of whom (the man) has a terminal illness. It is the one who is dying writing to the other ~ sort of. The first verse is them meeting and falling in love. The second is the woman spending time with the man's parents, recalling things she loved about him (his "sturdy arms"). Then it says, we both learned to cradle then live without. That is the parents cradling him as a child then him moving out. The woman cradled him as he was dying until he passed. The third verse is about the illness, hereditary most likely and the fourth is about the sick one predicting how the other one will live after he is gone. The most beautiful line of the song I think is where it says that "light strikes a deal with each coming night". When a person is confronted with say having a terminal illness, there actually is a psycologically documented grieving process. One of the stages is "bargaining", the second to the last stage, the last stage being acceptance. the light strikes a deal with each coming night line is a metaphor for the process of accepting ones death. Either that or perhaps before he died, she said that she would never forget him, and perhaps light striking a deal with pending darkness is an analogy for the inevitable forgetting that happens between people once they are separated.
I think this song is about lovers, one of whom (the man) has a terminal illness. It is the one who is dying writing to the other ~ sort of. The first verse is them meeting and falling in love. The second is the woman spending time with the man's parents, recalling things she loved about him (his "sturdy arms"). Then it says, we both learned to cradle then live without. That is the parents cradling him as a child then him moving out. The woman cradled him as he was dying until he passed. The third verse is about the illness, hereditary most likely and the fourth is about the sick one predicting how the other one will live after he is gone. The most beautiful line of the song I think is where it says that "light strikes a deal with each coming night". When a person is confronted with say having a terminal illness, there actually is a psycologically documented grieving process. One of the stages is "bargaining", the second to the last stage, the last stage being acceptance. the light strikes a deal with each coming night line is a metaphor for the process of accepting ones death. Either that or perhaps before he died, she said that she would never forget him, and perhaps light striking a deal with pending darkness is an analogy for the inevitable forgetting that happens between people once they are separated.