Moments I Forget by Maureen Williams (on Spotify)

Soundcloud link (if you don’t use Spotify)

This is a song about grief. I lost my Mom when I was just starting my life as an adult and it was first intense experience with grief. I had lost relatives previously but none so close as her and it was a tumultuous journey.

Ultimately I learned a great deal about grief and how long of a journey it can actually be. It involves letting yourself feel the ugly emotions and demanding the time you need to work through it even when people seem unwilling to give it.

The title is because my Mom was a soap opera fan and I was still watching from time to time because we used to watch them together. One of her favorite characters died and I was going to call her and commiserate with her until I remembered that she was gone. This opened up a huge channel of guilt that I had forgotten that she was gone. How could I just forget? In hindsight, it was a sign that I was healing from it by not being as consumed by it as I had been, but anyone who has been through grief knows it is multifaceted, complicated, and if the loss is big enough it has milestones just like any other major life event.

I didn’t actually write this song then though. I wrote it after someone close to me lost their loved one a few years later. When it all came rushing back I knew I was ready to put it into words and to music. I had gotten enough distance from the grief to not be consumed by it, but it was still present in my life and it always would be.

When you are fresh in grief so many want to help you ease your pain and say well intentioned phrases but when it is so fresh all you want is more time. I wasn’t interested in brushing past someone who had been so important to me. I guess in a way I was holding on to her in whatever way I could because life without her was untenable for a long time. I was in denial but needed to come out of it in my own time and in my own way.

This song is probably the best produced of all my songs and the man who recorded it (Don Bosse) did the instrumentation in the recording and also the mastering.

Lyrics:

Verse 1:

There’s always gonna be/ The moments that I forget

That you ain’t here with me/ I don’t believe it yet

How do I get through this/ How do I learn to live without

There’s always gonna be/The moments you should have seen

Chorus:

Maybe you’re out of pain/ Maybe you’re in a better place

But none of it means a thing when all I want is to see your face

Verse 2:

There’s always gonna be/ Your voice inside my head

Despite the pain I feel/ and all those tears I may shed

I know it’s not the same/ but it might keep me sane

There’s always gonna be/ a place for us in dreams

I am making another foray into music, practicing my old songs and hoping to write some new ones. I am not looking for stardom or money, I just feel like I am not done with creating music yet.

I wanted to share the lyrics and inspiration for the songs I have already written and if I write some new ones I’ll share those too. Music has always been integral in my life and when I started writing songs it helped me work through some things or at least get me thinking about it in the right way. It’s great when you hear one of those songs that can do that for you and it’s even better when you’re own process of writing helps you get through something. This is why many of us write in the first place right? To work through things or just play in our imaginations for awhile. I do that with songs too.

Most of my songs are on streaming services under the name Maureen Williams, fair warning though I was a hasty young person when I wrote and recorded these and some are very nicely mastered and even produced and some are not. I am planning on rerecording my favorites, at least the ones that need it, with better sound and mixing as I get my skills back up and also relearn how to record with updated equipment because I still love these songs and the meanings they carry after all these years.

There is no timeline for the release of the better versions, but I will post a link to the best version that exists in the internet whether it is on Spotify or a YouTube performance.