My Grandmother's Love Letters

I heard this song today on XM Radio's Broadway Channel. I found it on iTunes, and I can't get it out of my head.

There are some songs that are so moving to me that they're absolutely devastating--they break my heart they're so good. This is one of them.

My Grandmother’s Love Letters
From “The Maury Yeston Songbook”
Recorded by Christine Ebersole

I went up to my attic
To put away your letters
In a gray little box
With two broken locks
Next to an old bird cage
When I went to put your letters inside
I found another package
Covered with dust
and smelling of must
It came from another age.

My grandmother’s love letters
Held in her trembling hand
When she was seventeen
They were a world to her,
They were her youth,
They made her whisper low
Seventy-seven years ago.

My grandmother’s love letters
So firmly in her grasp,
She’d read one line and gasp
That means she breathed
the air of long ago
I loved her so.

Some things you never know
What makes the tide come in
and the little flower grow.
How Father Time decides
when he’ll come for one of us.

Some things you never know
What makes the eagle fly
and the southern wind blow.
These things, they come, they go
like portents,
omens,
dreams,
you never know.

My grandmother’s love letters
When she was seventeen,
Think what they had to mean
They were a world to her,
They were her youth,
She tied them with a bow
Seventy-seven years ago.

My grandmother’s love letters
So firmly in her grasp
She’d read each line and gasp,
And I’m the heir
She breathed so long ago
I miss her so.

Some things you never know
What makes the tide comes in
and the little flower grow.
How Father Time decides
when he’ll come for one of us.

Some things you never know
What makes the eagle fly
and the southern wind blow
These things, they come, they go,
like portents,
omens,
dreams,
you never know.

Seventy-seven years ago.