The rain falls where it wants to...

5 years ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I was devastated upon hearing the news. At that time, I had just started on Zoloft and was taking 100 mg./day-- half of the dosage that I'm currently taking. Suffering from depression, I looked to all sorts of ways to help me get through my life and find reason to stay alive. One of those ways was the radio-- I'd turn on the radio and listen for some sort of meaning in whatever song happened to be playing. Perhaps I was hoping for a personal message sent to me by God, or the Universe, or whatever... but if I wasn't getting that, I DID often get the hope that I was looking for.
So with the news that my mother had cancer, and was not expected to survive it, I once again turned on the radio looking for comfort. It was late at night and I couldn't sleep. I had just been laying in bed in the dark crying, occasionally sitting up for a cigarette. Then I thought to myself 'I'll turn on the radio... please God... help me get through this.' And with that thought I stood up and hit the power button, only to hear some cheesy love song playing on the oldies station that I normally have my radio tuned to. Knowing that wasn't what I was looking for, I changed the station to a Christian Rock station. Then I remembered something.
I suddenly remembered that when I was a kid and I couldn't sleep at night, my mother would let me lay in her bed and she would turn on her clock-radio for me to fall asleep to. Wow... my reliance on the radio for comfort went back further than I had initially realized-- it was my mother that got that started! But Mom would always have her radio on WITL 100, The Best in the Country... a Lansing country music station. So then I said to myself 'Ok Mom...you send me a nice song', and I turned the dial to FM 100.
What I then heard coming from my radio is exactly what I have posted in the bottom right corner of this blog... Gary Allan singing Smoke Rings in the Dark. I'd never heard the song before, and I didn't know at the time that it was another love-gone-bad song, as that's really only obvious if you hear the first verse (well ok... and in the chorus... but I interpreted it differently at the time). I came in during the second verse, and heard only the portion of the song that I have posted here...

The loneliness within me
Takes a heavy toll
'Cause it burns as slow as whiskey
through an empty aching soul
And the night is like a dagger
Long and cold and sharp
As I sit here on the front steps
Blowing smoke rings in the dark

I- I- I know I must be going
'Cause loves already gone
And all I'm taking with me
are the pieces of my heart
And all I'll leave are smoke rings in the dark

The rain falls where it wants to
The wind blows where it will
Everything on earth goes somewhere
But I swear we're standin' still
So I'm not going to wake you
I'll go easy on your heart
I'll just touch your face and drift away
Like smoke rings in the dark

And as I sat there on the edge of my bed listening to this song and 'blowing smoke rings in the dark', I felt as though my mother was singing to me. The line about the whiskey seemed to me at that time to be the clue that this was the case-- whiskey was my mother's greatest vice. She was an alcoholic and she'd go through those bottles of Kessler like it was water. And during the chorus where it says 'I know I must be going', it was as though my mother was letting me know that she was at peace with her own mortality. Then the final verse 'The rain falls where it wants to. The wind blows where it will. Everything on earth goes somewhere', was like a spiritual lesson reminding me that 1)we're not in control of when we die, and 2)we're all going to die some day, but that our soul will live on. Then the very last part of the song, 'I'm not going to wake you. I'll go easy on your heart. I'll touch your face and drift away like smoke rings in the dark.'... yeah... that's just what my mother would do. She would just allow herself to die quietly, not wanting to disturb or worry the ones that she loves.
So this song... a song that I had never heard until the night that my mother told me she only had two months to live... suddenly became a song that I associate with my mother... and with her death. I listen to the song every year on her birthday, on mother's day, and on the anniversary of the day that she died. I don't even know if my mother ever heard the song, or if she liked it if she did hear it. But to me, it's a song that I hold very dear to my heart... as if the lyrics were wise words... spoken directly from my mother to me.