Both of my grandmothers are stubborn in different ways. I guess that’s the right you earn for living through poverty, two wars, polio, raising kids, and watching spouses and siblings die. They’ve each lived in the same house for over 30 years watching their neighborhoods and towns evolve around them. As I’ve grown older, it’s become harder for me to visit them as regularly as I do, and I admit, I have no real excuse other than the fact that I’m prioritizing other things in my life. For both of them, I’m their only grandson still living in the Rochester area. I often wake to texts from my father saying I ought to call them or visit them and more often than something of the same spirit is his regular sign off on the phone. Calling one of them is now a regular reminder on my calendar for Monday evenings. Sad right?
My grandma, Barbara Bethmann Mahooty, my step-grandfather, Chester B. Mahooty with Hillary Clinton at Ganondagan State Historic Site, Victor, NY 1998.
My girlfriend’s family is from Niagara Falls. Another post-industrial town similar to Rochester, but it hasn’t quite recovered or evolved as much as the tech-academia bubble Rochester has become. Driving the streets of Niagara Falls today makes me think about the past and wonder what a sight it must have been to see these same vacant storefronts and dilapidated houses booming with prosperity, fueled by the steel mills and factories that once defined Niagara Falls. In the middle of this suspended city lived my girlfriend’s great Aunt, the stalwart resident of her house since 1928. She didn’t leave her house until her declining health and age forced her to, and even then she insisted that she be able to die in it. I can only imagine the changes she must have seen living there alone all of those years.
These are the thoughts and sights that inspired me when I wrote Until She Dies. At its heart, the song is about stubborn old women and the ever evolving world around them.
Lyrics:
She says she’ll stay until she dies
In that little house on Aberdeen
The one with the shutters and chipping paint
Decaying arborvitaes
She bought it in full and has the deed
Before grandpa went off to bleed
You wouldn’t think she was 94
Her jokes still cut you like a sword
And I’m her only grandson
Left in town to call on
Dad says I better call
But I let the days go on
The neighborhood’s changed since the golden age
When yearly bonuses took the stage
Fathers bringing home Cadillacs
Mommas keeping values intact
She’s lived alone all these years
Planting gardens next to tears
She always says it’s such shame
And claims Uncle Sam’s to blame
And I’m her only grandson
Left in town to call on
Dad says I better call
But I let the days go on
She says she’ll stay until she dies
In that little house on Aberdeen
On the front porch she’ll remain
In Spite of her children’s complaints
She said I better plea the 5th
The day I found her cigarettes
She’s says she’s earned her share of lies
And she’s gonna stay until she dies