Day 22: Headlights – The Classic Crime

A sad fact of life is that people leave. They leave temporarily or permanently from our lives. It’s sad when a best friend moves across the country, when a wife leaves her husband, or when a brother or son dies an untimely death. To “leave” has a lot of meanings but typically a negative emotion.

Between my junior and senior years of high school, a classmate of mine died. His name was Luke, and he was hilarious. He sat next to me in chemistry, and I honestly don’t remember learning anything in that class, but I’m pretty sure I laughed every single day. One morning in August, my dad asked me if I knew someone named Luke who went to my high school, then told me he had died suddenly on a trip out west – a rare heart condition. It floored me, because the last time I’d seen Luke, he had been laughing in my chemistry class.

Funerals for young people are awful. They’re not for remembering the person and their memory, but for mourning the loss of a future that will never come to fruition. That in and of itself carries a different weight than someone who has lived a long life and died peacefully in their sleep. A young man isn’t supposed to die. During those few weeks after the funeral, I wondered why. Why did someone I cared about so much have to die, weeks before the beginning of our senior year?

Because people leave, one way or another.

Day 22: Headlights – The Classic Crime 

There’s a few schools of thought about “Headlights” from The Classic Crime’s angsty 2006 album Albatross. If you were a slightly edgy Christian teen who was too cool for David Crowder, this is who you listened to. Matt MacDonald gets a little more real about life, y’know?

That’s where “Headlights” comes in. If you listen to the lyrics, it might be about someone dying, but it could also be about a breakup. Or worst of all, a suicide. There’s no one interpretation, but I think it works. When you boil it down, it’s about losing someone.

A summer’s drive away from dying
A broken heart, nothing to lose
I know it hurts so bad just trying
To please the ones you hate to love

The first verse is where the suicide school of thought comes from. This verse seems to introduce a theme of hopelessness – pleasing the ones you hate to love. The whole “nothing to lose” is also pretty indicative of that.

And I wrote this note
About someone I used to know
So I remember how life can be so short
When you’re left alone to wonder
How it is someone opens and shuts the door

So obviously MacDonald is looking back on something bad – someone leaving, whether they simply “shut the door” or are completely gone. “Life can be so short” is a hint that this song is actually about the death of a loved one. Namely, one who has died too soon.

And I know you’re cold, come home
It’s a shame how short we all have come
And I know you’re cold, come home
Please don’t face the headlights
Of oncoming cars alone

The chorus is a shift into the stages of grief, in some way. It also may indicate that this is about a friend who was lost to suicide. Typically people make that decision when they feel like they’ve fallen short. MacDonald knows that they’re gone (“cold,” also indicative that the person is dead) but still yearns for them to come home, like we all do when we lose a loved one.

You set your mind on cruise control
Knuckles grip the wheel
And fear to let it go

After something traumatic happens, it’s easy to go through a period of numbness. It’s as if you felt too much for a short period of time, so now it’s time to catch up. Burnout is another fitting word.

Love is empty, love is cruel
Love, it blindly breaks the rules
How could you have been a fool
It’s something all of us go through
You choke back tears and swallow lies
But those wiper blades won’t fix your eyes
Count on having clouded vision
For at least a little while

Sad reacts only, am I right? “Love is empty, love is cruel” sort of mirrors the love chapter of the Bible. It sounds like we’re shifting into the anger portion of the grieving process. Especially if this is a suicide situation. Suicide is called a permanent solution to a temporary problem – it seemed like this person might have taken that step, and left the rest of us with the damage, especially MacDonald.

That’s how it feels to lose someone. Tears will always be on the surface for awhile. MacDonald’s reminder in this is that you’re not alone. If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, you’re not alone. And if you’re grieving, you’re certainly not alone.