Goodbye Days Playlist

Welcome to your second stop on the Goodbye Days tour! Yes, it's my stop today! And am thrilled to be involved (The Serpent King was a gripping debut and I can't wait for you guys to get involved in this book!).

ANYWAY, If you are not aware of what Goodbye Days is about, a quick overview (keeping spoilers to a min, of course). As Carver waited for his three friends to pick him up to go for a drive, he sends a text. The next thing he knows, their car has crashed, all of his friends are dead and there are people - himself included - who blame him for their deaths. If only he didn't send that text...

Then, one of his friends's grandmother ask Carver to take part in a "goodbye day" together, doing things that his friend loved. Soon, the other families want to hold goodbye days. But not everyone wants to forgive and with Carver's own grief and despair threatening to drown him, are these goodbye days helping people cope or doing more harm than good?

As you know with this tour, Jeff Zenter is giving us each a song from his Goodbye Days playlist and a tiny write-up on why this song is important. In exchange, we were asked to write our thoughts on the book or what we would do if we spent a goodbye day with a loved one.

Before I show you today's music choice, I would just like to say thank you to Jeff for finding time to writing this and making me discover a new song (always on the hunt for new music) and for Harriet at Andersen Press for asking if I wanted to be involved in this tour!

Tomorrow's stop is at Chouett.com so check that out! And now, over to Jeff (and myself!)

First of all, you have me. And I am going to talk about what I would do on my own Goodbye Day. This is a tricky question to answer because there is no right answer. What you would do on a goodbye day for someone you love is going to be completely different to what I would do. But what I would want to do on this day is to show the person who's gone that I loved them, cared for them and will miss them. I would want to do something that means something of them to me. Whether that is watching a movie, take a walk or doing something they loved like watching their football team, even though they are the worse football theme in the length. But I would write them a letter. A letter about how much I miss them and all the other emotions swirling inside me - the good and the bad. And, maybe not on that day but when I was ready, I would burn the letter and send the ashes up into the sky.

Well, that took a morbid turn. Anyway, over to Jeff for his song choice and why he uses it to reflect Goodbye Days...

In July 2015, Nick Cave lost his fifteen-year-old son, Arthur, after he accidentally fell from a cliff. “Jesus Alone” is the first track on Nick Cave’s first album after this loss. This song is such a wrenching father’s lament. It sounds like the wind through an abandoned house. It’s filled with ache and hurt. “With my voice, I am calling you.” That line destroys me. In grief, you wish you could call the one you lost out of the darkness, back to you. You can summon them with your mind, why not your voice? I tried to capture that feeling in Goodbye Days.