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Medicine

Through the night you come and sit with me
Hold my hand when I’m unsettled and I cannot sleep
You are my medicine
Heart of gold and patience of a saint
Company when the ward is quiet and the hour is late
You are my medicine

Like a ghost in your reality
Slipping through unseen walls and boundaries
Through dreams and memories
Please be brave if I forget your name
Though it hurts my childhood friend I can see those tears
You should take your medicine

Broke my heart when my wife crashed the car
State of shock, I saw the wreckage and I saw the fire
No one made it clear
Yet she’s here, returned from the lost
Overcome, so confused I talk about it all day long
Taking my medicine

It’s not safe in this sanctuary
Avenue, someone is trying to poison me
Changing my medicine
Turn your back and walk out through the door
Spit them out and throw the pills across the floor
Taking my medicine

Nothing left, they ignore my every plea
I am scared, oh why have you abandoned me?
I don’t know who to believe
Late at night when I realise I am lost
So alone I cannot stop these helpless thoughts
What will become of me?

Locked away there is no escape, no way out
Will I ever breathe the open air
Or see my home again
Can’t give up, stubborn voice of will
Tries to fight and find some hope where there is no hope
I’ve given everything
I collaspe, my resistance has run down
Half glow dies, exhausted I’ve worn myself out
Drifting out of your reach

Stay a while
Every afternoon
Passing time
By ourseleves
Down the hall
In the piano room
We sit close
And try to find a tune
We get lost
In the stilliness of the shimmering notes
Hoping a spark will bloom

From the depth of childhood memories come to life
Feel the past resurfacing
Washing over me, Held in awe in this reverie
Vlose to god and bliss and rapture and I can’t believe The wonders I have seen
Bittersweet to real to be a dream I’m back home in Danville, Dublin 1943
In the heart of my family
Mother dear, you will worship me
Mother dear I will do your bidding on obediently
And take my medicine

Flood of tears, I sob against your chest
Oh my son, I thought that you were someone else
Taking my medicine
Brings me back to when my father died
Where I stood, give away beneath me in a landslide
Taking my medicine
By his side, I looked into his eyes
And we cried we both knew it had come to his time
Taking his medicine
You should go, this may be the last time
Hold my hand and kiss my forehead as you say goodbye
Take your medicine

I love you that’s something you can keep
In your heart now im alseep the dreamless sleep
And take my medicine

You can’t bring me back
No matter what you try
I’m never coming back
No matter how much you hope I can’t return
You can’t bring me back
No matter what you try
I’m never coming back
No matter how much you pray I can’t return You can’t bring me back
No matter what you try
I’m never coming back
I can never return

Song Notes

Tim said of the song:

This was a very hard song to write. It’s about my dad’s time in the dementia ward. He was paranoid all the time and trying to figure out how to get out of there. I was trying to understand what he was going through. It’s based around the same repetitive chord sequence, but I wanted to keep it interesting and for it to capture the kind of mood swings he would go through. One moment he’d be elated and the next he’d be crushed.

At one point they had a piano in the ward and I sat down with him one day. We played this kind of weird, sparse, almost ambient music. There’s a tiny bit of the recording of that in the song.