How Do I Say Goodbye

Five years ago, I was handed a script for a movie about the life of Ronald Reagan. I was asked to write a song or two based on the story of his life. Honestly, I was not sure if I could. I didn’t know his story very well.

Songwriting for me, from the age of 16 was just my form of free counseling. I have trouble feeling anything unless I write it down and put it to music. That way I can look back at a finished work and maybe recognize something of myself that I might understand.

Popular songwriters know who their audience is, apart from themselves, and they write for them in a way that could be part of another’s story that they too could sing. But that is not me.

When I started reading Reagan’s story, I assumed I knew him. As a public figure, he was a self-motivated leader, comfortable around people. Though I would never meet him, my band played at one of his presidential campaign rallies. What I noted was his affable, offhanded way of talking to people. Often answering questions with “well… “before starting a sentence. There was an irresistible charisma to the way he spoke. It gave you the feeling that you were simply talking over the back fence to a neighbor. And then there was his remarkable sense of humor in telling stories that had an impact on the listeners beyond just a joke. He was a communicator.

But in reading the script, I would discover, that was only the man he had become. His character was born of a fragmented past; troubled, problematic in many ways. And I begin to recognize things about his life that I could understand.

But nothing in his story clicked with me, in the way of writing a song. That is, until the final pages of the script, where he is facing a decision about what to do, knowing full well that he won’t be able to control the outcome or see an accomplished goal. Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and starting to get lost on his horseback rides, there was a poignant moment where he realizes that he has come to the end of something he loves.

And suddenly I was relating to him. It was as if it were my own story. I lived through my father’s Alzheimer’s. I didn’t understand it at the time. I remember making light of it. I was simply trying to lighten the mood. But I had no idea of the ugliness of losing a sense of who you are. Nor losing all those you have loved for your lifetime as well. Even watching it from the outside, I could not imagine the fear that comes with that early diagnosis. All the while, having a presence of mind, at the time, to know what is going to happen to you.

With the help of my old Sweet Comfort Band mates and producer James Raymond, we would begin work on some ideas musically. In the beginning, it was going to be a song about starting over because there were several points in Reagan’s life, as in ours, where the chapters in our story will have to change. There comes a time when you say goodbye to one thing and hello to something new. It happens to all of us.

In the first songwriting session we accomplished a general direction musically and a melody line that would fit. But on my way home, I couldn’t stop thinking about “goodbye”. I’d been here before, with the very band that I was now working with again. We had disbanded back in 1984. Over a year later I would start a solo career. But I remember, it took me three years to decide to say goodbye to the band.

It seemed to me that it was harder to face an ending than the fear of an unknown path forward. A counselor once told me, about the point where we change directions, saying “Change comes when the pain of your current circumstances is greater than the fear of doing something about it”. It means having to let go of what you know that’s familiar, even strangely comfortable.

And here is where I realized, in songwriting, that the moment of decision is more than enough for a single song. If it was any more generalized, it would lose the power of the fear and reluctance. So, in writing the lyrics, I put myself in the place that I had been so many times, just like Reagan, where I could not stay where I’ve been. And from there, the lyrics came easy: “came to the end of what to say, can’t live to fight for yesterday.”

From his early life, Reagan found an anchor in a faith in God even quoting a scripture or two in some of his speeches. And I believe that it was his faith that would propel him through his life of service to others and give him the courage to face an uncertain future, even to the close of his life as he knew it.

The Implication, from my perspective, is that the primary reason for embracing a faith in God, is the fact of our own mortality. We can busy ourselves with our plans in life, but in the end they are but a momentary diversion from the fact that we will face a solitary moment of transition from this life. We will stand alone at the door of a last goodbye and an unfamiliar “hello”. And here is where I scream in the song “where do I turn then?”

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Bryan Duncan is an award-winning singer/songwriter. He began his career as lead singer of Sweet Comfort Band before going solo. Sweet Comfort Band’s song “Do I Say Goodbye” appears on the Inspired by soundtrack of the Reagan film, starring Dennis Quaid on Curb Records.