My song today is. ‘Goodbye to Love’. This song was composed by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis. It was released by the ‘Carpenters’ in 1972. It is believed to be one of the first power ballads, if not the first, to have a ‘fuzz guitar solo’. ‘Goodbye to Love’ was the first Carpenters hit written by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis.
The finished product was released on June 19, 1972, and reached Number 7 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. It was the first song written by the songwriting team of Carpenter and Bettis to reach the US Top Ten. The Carpenters received hate mail claiming that the Carpenters had ‘sold out’ and gone to ‘hard rock’ because of Richard's idea for a fuzz guitar solo in a love ballad. ‘Goodbye to Love’ has been described as the prototypical ‘power ballad’.
In the UK the song was originally released in 1972 as the B-side to ‘I Won't Last a Day Without You’. The sides were switched shortly after the record's release, and it reached Number 9 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’, becoming the duo's first single since ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You’ to make the top ten.
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Saying ‘Goodbye to love’ is one of the most difficult emotions one has to endure in this life. The experience can vary enormously in emotional consequences for the person who is saying ‘goodbye’. It can include the ending of a love affair, or the ‘waving off’ of a dear friend, partner or relative at the railway station, or saying ‘goodbye’ from the port as their ship sails out of the harbour, not knowing how long it will be if or when you see each other again.
I will never forget when I left the parental home for the first time in my life to live and work in Canada at the age of 21 years. The date was December 1963. Shortly before I emigrated for a few years, President Kennedy had been assassinated. In those years, apart from the young men who joined the armed forces, one could be born and die within the same county where one had lived their whole life. A person of 21 years of age was usually getting married and starting a family of their own, not crossing the Atlantic Ocean to live in a foreign land, and leaving one’s parents and family in the fear that they might never see them again. Communication was so different then, and trans-Atlantic communications for the average man and woman depended upon the exchange of letters that usually took up to one month between posting and receiving at the other end.
The last vision of my mother during that extremely cold-winter day as I left home was her tears, as she peered out of the frosty window and waved her goodbye to me with my suitcase in my hands.
My mum died at the early age of 64 years, and the last time she waved and smiled at me occurred many years following my return from Canada when I was back to West Yorkshire, and married and with two sons. My mother had been ill during the last few years of her life, and I had visited her in the hospital ward at Dewsbury where she was an inpatient. As I walked to my car after visiting her, mum waved to me and smiled from the window at the side of her hospital bed. It was the last time I saw her alive, and I have missed her presence in my life ever since.
Several months ago, during the country’s recent Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown, my good friend, Ann Lister (who had unfortunately been unable to receive the life-saving cancer operation that she had been scheduled for) sadly died. Ann was a veritable Mary Poppins who spent most of the past decade nursing her husband for fourteen years before cancer took his life, as well as maintaining contact with dozens of people of ill-health (like myself) by her regular visits to cheer them up. She never made a visit to any of her friends without presenting them with a jar of her beautiful whiskey marmalade and leaving them feeling better than they had been at her arrival. She was also a loving person who it was extremely hard saying a final ‘goodbye’ to. Apart from her best friend Kay Green, who was at her bedside to hold her hand when Ann died, the rest of her loving friends had to say ‘goodbye’ through their fond memories of her.
Shortly after the death of my friend, Ann Lister, my lifelong friend and best mate for over fifty years died in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. His name was Tony Walsh. We shared our wild teenage years together; we dated, we drank, we danced, we worked, and we fought as buddies throughout. When Tony died, a part of me also died. With Tony’s passing, I lost a huge part of my youth.
More recently, my dear brother-in-law, Winston Williams, was found dead in a Bradford street. Winston was my wife, Sheila’s only sibling. He was 62 years old and had suffered from mental health issues ever since the collapse of his marriage, and the estrangement from his children two years earlier. Sheila, myself, and many others tried to offer Winston help and advice, but his mind was not in a place that was conducive enough to receive it. With myself being included in the high vulnerability category and with the country being in Lockdown, poor Winston was not able to have entry to our home throughout the four months prior to his tragic death. He could have benefitted from the receipt of psychiatric help with his mental health issues, but because of NHS lack of resources, none was forthcoming. We are still in the process of ‘saying farewell’ to Winston as we await the Coroner’s post-mortem report and his funeral arrangements.
Three months after I married Sheila in November 2012 on my 70th birthday, I was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. Since that date, our married life has been turned upside down because the nature of my illness renders me without a strong-enough immune system to fend of colds, bugs, and all infections. Each time I share the same air space as another person who has any cold, infection or bug; each time I mix in a crowd who are unmasked or shake hands, kiss on the cheek or hug another person, I play Russian roulette with my own life. Their cold becomes my instant pneumonia (three bouts of protracted pneumonia lasting months each time during the past eight years).
Another serious byproduct of my terminal blood cancer is that it will give me a constant stream of different cancers as long as I live. So far, I have had three different cancers of blood, rectum, and skin, plus one lymphoma. These conditions have necessitated nine cancer operations (six operations in the past 17 months) three years of monthly blood transfusions, two nine-month courses of chemotherapy, and forty sessions of radiotherapy. I also have to get my cancerous rectal warts checked out again asap after a recent discovery of blood in my faeces. The cancerous rectal warts have either returned or it could also be some more serious cancer which I need to get dealt with soon.
In many ways, since I told my children 7 years ago, they have had to live with the constant possibility of having to say ‘goodbye’ to their father, never knowing if the next time they see me if it will be their last time. Likewise, my lovely wife, Sheila, has also had to readjust herself to be constantly prepared to face a new medical challenge with me each year I live now. The hardest ‘goodbye to love’ one ever has to make is undoubtedly the ‘final goodbye’ we say to any spouse, child, father, mother, brother, and sister, or close family member.
Whenever I think of all of those people who were not able to be at the bedside of their dying loved ones, and not able to say their final goodbye because of the government restrictions on attending funeral services during recent Coronavirus lockdown, I weep. God help them secure peace and closure on their bereavement experiences.
Love and peace Bill xxx