The Killers: Songs for a Future Widower

During the year my wife was dying, there were a few Killers songs that ran around my mind. Some of them came unbidden, and others I sought out. There are two events in Brandon Flowers’ (Killers vocalist) life that connect to the songs I will mention below. The first was the death of his mother Jean Barlow Flowers (1945-2010). The second was more recent manifestation of mental illness in Flowers’ wife Tana. Even with songs that are mostly unconnected to the listener’s circumstances, there will be lines and snippets that can be stolen to other purpose. So, sit down and hear five songs that I snatched or that snatched me.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST LINK

“The Clock Was Tickin’”
(Spotify, YouTube)
This one is from Brandon Flower’s first solo album, which was released seven months after his mother’s death, and some points in this song match up with his parents’ lives—meeting at sixteen, having six children. Friday late morning, November 10, 2017, I was with my wife when she learned from a radiologist’s report that the pain in her back was due to tumors in her vertebrae that had originated from cancer cells in her kidney. She had a deadly disease, and it was well advanced. We walked out stunned, no tears for several minutes. At one point in the silence I started humming the chorus of “The Clock Was Tickin,’” realized what I was doing, and quickly shut myself up before Elizabeth could give my tune any notice. I liked the song before when it was about someone else, and I find its theme of a countdown I didn’t know was ticking well expressed.

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
The house is quiet now and everything inside it seems to know she’s gone
There’s a picture of you both sixteen years old just kissing
And that clock up on the wall was tickin’

“A Dustland Fairytale”
( Spotify, YouTube)
The Day & Age album with this song was released 14 months before Jean Flowers died following two years dealing with brain cancer. I don’t find this expression of the fear of losing a mother aligns much with my own fears of losing a wife, but there is one small part that did.

Like sinking ships we preservere.
God gives us hope, but we still fear:
We don’t know.

During my initial days married to Schrodinger’s wife, that plaintive “We don’t know” rang in my head as I sought courage and faith.

“Life To Come”
(Spotify, YouTube)
The Killers’ fifth album Wonderful Wonderful was released seven weeks before our stunning morning described above. Four mornings later, Elizabeth and I left home for what would be the first of six hospitalizations. Our first stop was the temple, roughly half-way to her appointment. Back in the car after our hours there, I played this song for her and she wept.

I didn’t see this coming, I admit it
But if you think I’ll buckle forget it
I told you that I’d be the one
I’ll be there in the life to come

A line that has a personal resonance with me is the singer boasting “I don’t remember stumbling when I said it.” When I and my wife were sealed, I announced my acceptance of the marriage with a loud, clear “Yes.” I didn’t want any hint of whispery vagueness. A couple lines I didn’t expect to find applicable were “Let go of the blame [. . .] Just dropkick the shame.” Elizabeth wondered how she had managed to give herself cancer and speculated in a troubled way the cause for the damaged short arm of chromosome 3 of the kidney cell that initiated her disease. It was hard to get a responsibly-minded woman to abandon that search for a sin to repent. This song helped me help her.

“Rut”
(Spotify, YouTube)
Another song on the Wonderful Wonderful album was even more explicitly about Flowers’ wife’s mental health, but it is a good song for dealing with someone dealing with broad sorts of ongoing hardship. My wife told me many years ago of her paternal grandparents. He was invalid for some years before his death, at which point she was worn out. She told Elizabeth some time later that it took months to get beyond those final times and remember when life together had been different and happy. I kept this song to myself and played it repeatedly to buoy me in my heavy support tasks. A month before Elizabeth died, she didn’t leave the house anymore except for medical purposes, and we didn’t leave her home alone. After the visit of one friend, she said “My friends think I’m dying.” In those final weeks, I played this song for her. “‘I’m climbing but the walls keep stacking up.’ Yes, that’s what it’s like.”

I can’t keep pretending this next stop isn’t mine
The truth is on the table, and someone’s gotta sign
I’ve done my best defending
But the punches are starting to land
I’m sliding into something
You won’t understand

Don’t give up on me
‘Cause I’m just in a rut
I’m climbing but the walls keep stacking up

“Goodnight, Travel Well”
(Spotify, YouTube)
The final track from 2008’s Day & Age is one that I had listened to many times in the years after it was created, but somehow had not associated with death until some weeks after Elizabeth Mansfield died and I listened to it again. It’s a bit mystifying; I guess I just didn’t need it before. Before it evoked for me the aftermath of an unforgivable mistake causing an irreparable rupture, something like Dominic walking away with an oar over his shoulder after the wreck of Joseph Conrad’s Tremolino, but less dramatic, just sad and wearying.

The unknown distance to the great beyond
Stares back at my grieving frame
To cast my shadow by the holy sun
My spirit moans with a sacred pain
And it’s quiet now
The universe is standing still

There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing we can do now
There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing we can do now

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST LINK