This song was written right after my grandfather’s death.  I quit my job when he got sick so I could come home and take care of him in his final months.  It was the best thing I ever did. 

My grandfather was serving in the army in Biloxi, Mississippi during WWII, when doctors found what we now know as cancer in his leg.  His parents and sister traveled from New York to speak with the doctors.  His parents were ready to do whatever the doctors prescribed until his sister asked what his odds of survival were if he kept his leg.  Five to ten percent.  When she asked what his odds would be if they amputated it, their response was, “Ten, maybe twenty percent. We just don’t know.” 

Upon hearing this his mother said, “If he is going to die, he is going to die with both his legs.”  And that was that.  He was discharged from the army that day.  It was May 21, 1944.  I have a picture of him walking down a Biloxi street that day with his sister.  

Needless to say the man lived longer than the doctors expected.  He moved back to New York, met and married my grandmother and for a long time was the patient with the longest known case of natural cancer remission (his cancer mysteriously went into remission in 1946).  Because of all this, to me, the man was invincible. 
 
I was on tour when the call came that the doctors had given my grandfather six weeks to live.  Lung cancer.  My mom was crying like I had only heard a few times before. 

A week later I was home, and I spent the next few months spending all the time I could with him.  But I kept putting off the reason I came home.  I needed to thank him.  I hadn't the chance to do so with others I loved, and I did not want to have any regrets.  So one day I just came out with it.  I said, “Hey, I got something I need to tell you.  I spent a good many years looking at what I didn’t have in my life, what I didn’t get to experience, and I finally got tired of it.  So I started looking at what I did have, and instead of focusing on who my father wasn’t – I focused on who he was.  And that is you.  You are the standard by which I judge myself every day.  And for that I am grateful.”

He teared up, and all he said was, “I have always tried to do the right thing.”

He knew when it was time.  The last time I saw him, he took off his wedding ring and handed it to me.  That night he died in his sleep.  It was May 21, 1999.  Fifty-five years to the day he was diagnosed with cancer.  It’s a damn good thing he got to keep his leg.

The next morning I sat at the piano and this song just fell out of me.  I don’t play it often at shows.  It seems too personal for an audience, but that is changing for me.  I get a lot of real responses to it.  I think its because everyone has someone like my grandfather, who has shown them how to live. 

A few weeks ago I was with my lady clowning around, and she turned her camera on me.  The first thing I did was raise my arms above my head Charles-Atlas style.  It was exactly the thing my grandpa used to do.  I immediately felt him inside me and was briefly reminded of what it was like to be around him.  I guess that is what “CARRY YOU”  is all about.