book- song

( Delete from para starting with "Finally.." on page 333. Then add following..)

Here we are, back to music again, this time to end my story. I recently  found a song by the late Jim Croce that I can really identify with, especially now, as the years go by.

The final song on Jim's final album is called "The Hard Way Every Time." It sums up my life perfectly.

The melody is hauntingly beautiful. But the lyrics capture my attention most of all.

Croce looks back on his own life in the lyrics. He endured "more than a couple of falls" and while "chasing what I thought were moonbeams" he had "run into a couple of walls."

Croce weighs the successes and failures of his life, writing "if you don't bend, well, those are the breaks." In other words, you have to take the bad with the good. No regrets. Live life to it's fullest each and every day.

The words mean so much when one considers Jim's fate soon atfer writing "The Hard Way Every Time." He tragically died in a plane crash in 1973.

In the end, while "looking back at the faces I've seen," he considers, all in all, "I wouldn't have done it any other way."

Me too. The broken bones made me a stronger person. The happiness and love in my life overshadowed the pain. So it's true- I wouldn't have done it any other way.