I’ve got a long list of regrets that I keep in my head I think that most people do the same Some are big, some are small, some are louder than a train And I spend my days trying to drown them out Should I have gone out on the road at the first sign of success Quit my job and burned my savings for the dream Said “I love you” to my wife as I walked out the door To a life of little towns and in between Did I hide behind a ghost? Did I stop instead of go? Was I too goddamn afraid to risk it all? Well I’ve got another chance and I’ll say it so you know It’s on me and me alone to rise or fall If I’m asking for it all, I need to give it to you straight I need to stop wrapping my words up in a code I’m pretty good at making noise and singing things that sound profound I take it right up to the edge and pull the punch Like my song about divorce, it isn’t really about kids It’s about our dog and cat and how we split them up Maybe it doesn’t matter much, maybe I shouldn’t bring it up And there’s regret again just when I thought I’d won I’m going to pour everything into this record of my life Every pain and every fear and every loss All the things that I held back and all the things that I left out And maybe that will finally, finally quell the doubt Maybe that will finally, finally quell the doubt Maybe that will finally, finally quell the doubt Maybe…

Up and down the stairs we went In the gray of a winter that wouldn’t end An old black dog with bad hips and a cough Some days we’d have to carry him the last flight up Flashback to April of ’01 I got him from the pound when he was young My ex-wife was there as I put him in the car But he was always mine right from the start Through the years he kept me in line We things we tough he was there all the time Now he’s gray and he can’t hear a thing But I’ll carry him up those stairs again and again How do we say goodbye When we have the chance to write The last words of a precious life How do we know to say goodbye My grandpa’s 92 or 93 He’s been in a home a couple years at least My grandma’s there too but just since the fall I visit once a week, my sister tries to call Lately he’s been having trouble with his food Can’t see the plate and can barely chew So they blend it up and give him a straw And he does his best, I guess, like he’s done for so long He loved opera and books and pulled for the Sox Now he can’t really think and can barely talk And I sit with him every Thursday In his little room and we listen to the radio play How do we say goodbye When we have the chance to write The last words of a precious life How do we know to say goodbye My grandma’s down the hall in a different place She got sick last year but she’s okay She saves me cans of lemon-lime pop I don’t really drink them but I won’t tell her to stop We look out her window and she remembers the times Growing up in the city when her mom died She was only six and it was just the start She talks about Chicago with so much love in her heart Riding the streetcars and walking to school Dancing at the Aragon and swimming in pools We sort through her pictures, she tells me who’s who I’ve seen them all before but each time I learn something new How do we say goodbye When we have the chance to write The last words of a precious life How do we know to say goodbye I met my wife in a skyscraper I looked like Jesus and I smiled at her I was separated two months at the time Still wearing a ring and writing Look Alive I sat by her at drinks that night And something wrapped my heart up tight Skip to 2010, the 10th of July In front of friends and family she became my wife We live a good life and work real hard Been through some shit and come really far I love her like nothing I’ve known in my heart And I’d do anything to keep her from the dark I’m younger than her, it never mattered much Maybe once in awhile with the usual stuff We’re planning our future and think of a time When one of us might leave the other behind She’s pretty sure she’ll go before me But my other grandpa didn’t even make 50 And nothing is promised not even today So I pray for the grace to grow old and gray How do we say goodbye When we have the chance to write The last words of a precious life How do we know to say goodbye

Me and my best friends met in high school We did the things that every kid’s supposed to do Like chasing girls and getting high We saw the Grateful Dead’s last show in ’95 My friends Have we changed? Somewhere inside these three hearts Aren’t we just the same Three kids who took our parents’ cars And drove around til dawn I can’t believe those times are 20 years gone One friend moved east, he disappears for months I call and call and call until he’s had enough He quit his job, got really dark It wasn’t anything new but each time hits him so hard He had a kid who gave him light I see him once a year and worry he’ll lose his fight My friend Are you okay? Can you pull yourself up to meet the light of day I meant it every time I called and said “I’m here” I hope you know how much I hold you dear One friend moved west to make a life He got a job and it was through that that he met his wife They had four kids, two sets of twins He ran for state office and he went on to win When we met up in Vegas last year We drank and laughed and drank til we were both in tears My friend A song still plays When I think of thumbing 1-0-1 from Seattle to the Bay I meant it every time I said “I love you, man” I’m always here, just call me when you can Just call, call me when you can

Three ghosts came to me on the night I wrote this song In my sleep I picked up my guitar and I could play nothing wrong The first ghost was a friend from high school who took her life at 16 She and a classmate made a pact and sat in the garage with the car running The day we heard my dad and I were driving back from downstate We stopped so he could check in with my mom and he came back to car with a look as heavy as the rain We sat in silence for the rest of the ride and I thought about the loss She and I had worked together in a club and I’d even asked her to prom The following days we filled up the churches as fathers remembered their girls We tried and we hugged and we walked and we talked how we all felt alone in the world Now it’s decades ago I don’t think of her much but every once in awhile by chance I remember the smile on her face in the hallway when she turned me down for the dance The second ghost was my wife’s ex who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge Left two kids behind, a note on a napkin and a list of deceptions long and rich They were a thing for four years in all, one good, one less and two tough They bought a house and moved in together, she tried to save him but it wasn’t enough She remembers the phone calls, the questions, the shock, when they found his car on the Bridge The search for a body, a shoe or a shirt but nothing was ever recovered and so it was Just a year later when she and I met and she told me of that first night alone Awash in a loss no one can imagine and waiting and waiting… and he’s not coming home The third ghost was my uncle Curt who passed away Christmas week He used a gun to finish a job he’d been working on decades with drink He lived in Seattle was estranged from us here in Chicago for most of my life What I was told was a typical story that no one got along with his wife Then in a turn of incredible fate not eight months after he died My wife and I were the airport in Seattle waiting in one of those interminable lines And an airline employee came up to us there to help with changing our flight She looked at our tickets, I looked at her badge and realized it was my uncle’s wife “Nancy” I said “It’s Joe…” And my words hung in the air She took a step back and then she embraced me as if she wasn’t sure I was there And I told her I read the words that she wrote in the paper, so honest, so beautiful, so stark And she that near the end though they’d gotten divorced she’d stayed with him in her heart And after ten or so minutes we said our goodbyes I’m pretty sure that all of us wept And the whole flight home I wondered and I Held my wife As she slept

When I was four or five on a morning in July I road the train downtown with my dad We did it every week, our Saturday routine We’d take it to the end of the line Along the I-290 rush I couldn’t get enough Of the city passing by stop by stop My dad would read a magazine, watch me watch the scenery He was in his 30’s at the time He must have been as old as I am now I remember going through a book of the pictures that we took Of all our family trips and birthday cakes There was one shot of my mom with sister as a tot Taken in the living room of our first place My sis can barely stand so my mom gives her a hand With a look upon her face I can’t describe At this leaning little child with her crooked baby smile My mom was in her 30’s at the time She must have been as old as I am now I was lucky growing up, I didn’t want for much My loved ones always stayed and never left Sure my heart was broken once and I lost some friends too young But compared to others’ pain I feel blessed Now I’m getting to the age where people start to go away Lost my Bubbie on Two Twenty-Two Thirteen She was ninety-seven years of more laughter than tears She took her second husband’s name which was Green For her last days on the earth she had a Nigerian nurse Who bathed her and held her and sang to her at night And when she finally passed in her easy chair she sat And her nurse was there waiting just outside We gathered in her flat, aunt, uncles, mom and dad To eat and drink and talk about her light And I looked at all the smiles of the people who shaped my life And I knew someday they’d all be gone And once they were as old as I am now And once they were as old as I am now

I am in sky above the Bay flying back to Chicago on Good Friday night I’m drinking alone and I’m trying to write one more song for this record of my life I was in California playing music I wrote based on Homer’s Odyssey Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be living something out of a dream Sure it’s different than I imagined when I learned Appetite for Destruction in fifth grade But the same feeling I got from Slash’s guitar I still feel in my fingers every time I play I get to sing for people who care and go to places near and far And whether it’s rock and roll songs or epic poetry it comes right from my heart And the sun is aflame out the windows behind cause the earth is spinning ‘round And the plane is dipping towards my city of light and soon I’ll be on the ground And no matter what’s happened to me on this crooked race that I’ve run I’m here in the air and I’m going home to the woman that I love Coming back from doing something that I love How lucky to have something and someone to love