Heaven and Hell

The latest video on Nithish’s YouTube channel

Video description: Nithish wrote this song in school after finally being able to spend a significant amount of time with me after six months of not seeing me. It came all at once, sung to him line by line by the inner voice. It was sung to the tune of “Daylight” by David Kushner, and I did the best I could to make it sound like that song when I took the wrapper he wrote it on and put it to my guitar. I was able to consult with him during that process.

Losing a child in circumstances where the child also loses you his parent sets up heartbreak on a level of suffering that is simply hell, for the parent and the kid, because your kid isn’t dead; your daddy isn’t dead. Both are in easy seeing distance but cannot even talk on the phone or message each other, and that is a knife that does not stop stabbing as time goes on. As long as that kid’s a kid, and even after, and as long as that daddy’s a daddy, hope assails you in the same place as despair, and all the bad voices are saying bye, all the good voices are saying hi. Now you can hear the song. He loves his daddy.