What is “Two Headstones” about?
"Two Headstones" finds the narrator at his parents' side-by-side graves, bringing daisies for his mother, nothing for his father and talking to them both. The verses sketch fifty-three years of marriage: fights about money every winter, dancing in the living room every spring, her name carved into a walnut tree, his Army letters saved in a cedar box. Twice divorced himself, he finds his answer in the grass that has grown together at the root between them. It is the penultimate track on The Last Porch Light.
Two Headstones lyrics
Two headstones side by side on the hill
Where the oaks throw shade in the afternoon
Daddy on the left, nineteen thirty-eight to ninety-one
Mama on the right, joined him way too soon
I bring flowers every other Sunday
Daisies for her, nothing for him
He never was the sentimental type
But I talk to both of them
Two headstones and a whole life between them
Fifty-three years of holding on
Through the drought and the debt and the babies crying
Through the nights that went too quiet and too long
Two headstones and I'm standing in the middle
Trying to figure what they knew
About the kind of love that doesn't make the movies
But outlasts everything that does
Mama kept a garden, daddy kept the books
She sang in the kitchen, he worked till he couldn't see
They fought about money every single winter
And danced in the living room every spring
He carved her name into the walnut tree
The year Kennedy was shot
She kept every letter from his Army days
Tied in a ribbon in a cedar box
Two headstones and a whole life between them
Fifty-three years of holding on
Through the drought and the debt and the babies crying
Through the nights that went too quiet and too long
Two headstones and I'm standing in the middle
Trying to figure what they knew
About the kind of love that doesn't make the movies
But outlasts everything that does
I'm older now than daddy was
When he first started losing his hair
And I've been married twice and failed at both
So who am I to stand here
But the grass between their graves
Has grown together at the root
And maybe that's the only answer
That matters or is true
Two headstones and a whole life between them
And the grass has grown together at the root
The kind of love that doesn't make the movies
But Lord it outlasts everything that does
Two headstones
And a whole life between them
A whole life between them