I can smell the death on the sheets
Covering me
I can't believe this is the end
But this is my deathbed
I lie here alone
If I close my eyes tonight
I know I'll be home
The year is 1941
I was eight years old and far, far too young
To know that the stories of battles and glory
Was a tale a kind mother made up for a son
You see, Dad was a traveling preacher
Teaching the words of the teacher
Mother had sworn he went off to the war
And died there with honor, somewhere on a beach there
But he left once to return
Which taught me that I should unlearn
Whatever I thought a father should be
I abandoned that thought like he abandoned me
By '47, I was fourteen
I'd acquired a taste for liquor and nicotine
I smoked until I threw up, yet I still lit 'em up
For thirty more years, like a machine
So right there you have it
That one filthy habit
Is what got me where I am today
I can smell the death on the sheets
Covering me
I can't believe this is the end
I can hear the sad memories
Still haunting me
So many things I'd do again
But this is my deathbed
I lie here alone
If I close my eyes tonight
I know I'll be home
Got married on my twenty-first
Eight months before my wife would give birth
It's easier to be sure you love someone
When a father inquires with the barrel of a gun
The union was far from harmonious
No two people could've been more alone than us
The years would go by and she'd love someone else
And I'd realized I hadn't been loved yet myself
From there it's your typical spiel
Yeah, if life was a highway, I was drunk at the wheel
I was helpin' the loose ends all fall apart
Yeah, I swear I was destined to fail, and fail from the start
I bowled about six times a week
A bottle of Beam kept the memories from me
Our marriage had taken a 7