Sorrow And Joy - Indigo Girls

We’ve had some good times

In photographs you see us laughing and carrying on

White shirts on the clothesline

Outside flapping like misshapen flags

And where are the claims that we staked when we sank in the mire

Motion suspended like stillness of birds on a wire

Look, in good order from tallest to smallest

Dressed up for the shot

Some of us got to go on with our lives

The ones that leave holes are the ones that did not

And if you believe you will see them again over Jordan

And if you’re not sure, you will plant them a tree in the garden

Sorrow and joy are not oil and water

They’re hater and lover, they inform each other

Attract and repel make us sick make us well

But in the end we must hold them together

On the day that President Reagan was shot

You skipped home from school thinking this was good news

We surrounded you horrified broke you to tears

But we’d force fed you politics beyond your years

And after you died it was me who had cried

At the memory

Some things would fade

But that image is clear as the day to me

Sorrow and joy…

Now you’re a still life, a rose on the table

Forever a child

My desperate desire just to ask you some questions

Your school picture staring back at me a smile

Plays on your face like the best of the times that we knew

And how the negative lights up the darkness in you

Sorrow and joy are not oil and water