"How To Save a Life" by: The Fray

Song: How To Save a Life by The Fray

Feeling: Sadness, Remorse

Description: Since the day I first discovered the song "How To Save a Life" by The Fray, the song and band have become one of my favorites. I have always thought the song had a sad theme to it. The story is written from 'death's perspective because of a book I read, The Book Thief, by one of my favorite authors, Markus Zusak. The book is written from the perspective of 'death' so I got the idea from there. (Thanks Markus Zusak for being such an amazing author and writing that amazing beyond belief book which brought me the idea) :) 

Story:

            This isn’t the story of her death. This isn’t the story of how she came to me. This is the story of what happened after her death. Of what happened after she slipped into my arms and let me carry her away. This is the story of them.

Them are perched on a rooftop, the cold wind caresses their faces. Maybe caressing is not the right word for what the wind was doing. It was tussling their hair and slapping their cheeks with it’s icy being, but they didn’t mind, not one bit, to them it all felt as warm and soft as actual human touch.

            “It’s a nice night.” One of them says. He has pale blonde hair and eyes like the depths of the ocean. A blue so dark you wonder how deep they go. His words were his attempt at breaking the sadness that pressed down on them both. A small, weak rebellion at the crushing silence. He failed.

            The night, if anything, was not nice. It wasn’t harsh either. But it was most definitely not nice. The wind slithered through it and the night sky hid under a blanket of heavy clouds. The stars offered no comfort to the two people perched on the roof. Not that the stars could do much anyways. Those two could be the gossip of the heavens, the talk of the moon and maybe even the sun would pitch in his opinion, but they were beyond their help

            Or at least one of them was.

            He was the brown haired one with eyes like faded suns. He was also the broken one, the one who had begun to live a little more recklessly yesterday, and the one who before that had begun to stop caring if he tripped into my arms or not. He was the one that had lost her. I’m guessing you’ve already figured out that he loved her.

            The other one, the other one still had a bit of a chance. Even if he was the one who lived life on the very edge, scraping his knees and skidding to it’s very edges screaming his lungs out in adrenaline coming so close to me, so near, that I am scared for him sometimes. Not many people evade me like that, and even fewer do it as many times as he does. But over a while I learned to get used to it, and I knew I didn’t have to worry about him. He knew how to get back up and keep going. He knew what falling meant. He was the one who still had the chance, and if he played it right maybe his companion would also have a bit of hope, but that is not the point of this. Hope is not why I’m here, hope is not what this is about. Sadly, hope is a stranger right now who is arriving a little too late in this story.

            He had lost him in a whole different matter. He had lost his calm and gentle friend, the one to keep him in check. He had lost him to her death, in a way he had lost him to me.

“What are you going to do now kid?” The blonde one asks. It’s another attempt at making this night seem slightly more durable. This time he succeeds. His words don’t fall and shatter like they did last time, and the time before that.

            “I don’t know.”   

            But the answer sure does. Oh it falls, diving straight at the ground in hopes that if it hits it hard enough maybe it will just disappear into nothingness.

            “Jeez, kid, that’s the fifth time I’ve heard you say that tonight.” The blonde one says. It wasn’t the fifth time he said it that night it was actually the fourth. I’m counting.

            “I know.” The brown haired one responds. He shrugs letting the wind pass him by. “I just…I don’t know anything. She was the one who did, I was just the clueless one behind her. Now I don’t know anything.”

            Now we’re back to her. Her. The reason we are even up here on this windy rooftop in the first place.

            She had a name, she still does, but he calls her she. So we will call her that as well. This is the story of them and to fully understand it we have to look at things through him. And he dictates that she is her name.

            She, as you may have gathered, was a girl. Or at least to every one else she was a girl. To him, she was much more than that. I could spend years trying to describe her, I could gather the best poets and writers and never would they be able to fully write her out, I could take the best painters and they wouldn’t be able to fully capture her.

            Again this isn’t the story of her. This is what happened after her. This is what happened to them. What I did to them, what I left behind.

            Her death wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault really. Maybe you can blame the slick road or the fact that she was speeding a little and that that speed came from the depths of her soul. She was always prone to take out her emotions while driving. Though all in all, her death had no blame. This might have been a good thing, but not for people like him. If he could not blame it on the world, then he would blame it on himself. 

            I am sure that if he could see me he would blame it on me. He would say that he hates me and berate me because I had no right to take her. I would listen to him but other than that ignore him. I hold no right or options, I only come wrapped up in the package of life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel his hate, and that doesn’t mean I don’t see what I do to humans, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the guilt when I see them crying for those that I carry in my arms. Their last desperate cries holding their loved one’s hand as I gently gather the departing soul and place it over my shoulder. I feel it. I felt what I did to him. 

            He put all the blame on himself and some how that knocked the gentle right out of him. His words lost their careful and sweet tones only to be replaced my a whipping tongue, and his gentle way of looking at the world. It melted off his eyes, now wherever he turns he doesn’t see good, he sees me.

            And that’s where he is right now. Cursing and thinking and looking all to closely for something he will never find again, not even caring if he meets me. 

            “You know it wasn’t your fault.” The blonde one tells him. He means it. I can tell, even if he has been saying more than a million times. His words still hold truth. There not just there for comfort.

            “It was my fault.” He answers. “Whose else? I could have stopped it all from happening. If I had just seen it coming, but I had to let her go didn’t I?” He asks this. Not to anyone in particular but some how his demand reaches me and I find myself looking for an answer.

            “But you didn’t. You couldn’t have.” His companion says harshly. He’s tired, I can tell. Tired of seeing his friend get hurt like this. Tired of watching as slowly he turns as harsh and tough as he is.

            “I could. I know I could, I just wish I had known how to save a life.” The brown haired one whispers into the air.

            “Yeah, kid so do I.” the blonde one answers.

            I could leave now. No, I should leave right now. But I can’t, I am stuck in that instant with them, stuck in the sound of their silence, the sound of their sadness and I can both of them think:
            "Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend,
              Somewhere along in the bitterness,
              And how could I've stayed up with you all night
             Had I known how to save a life...."