Cry Ophelia
Something went wrong
You're not laughing It's not so easy now To get you to smile
I stand in the office door and look in at her, she's sitting in the soft leather chair and is running her hands over the objects on the desk. Tears are leaving salty trails on her cheeks as she stares into space and in the silence I can feel her agony, her anger, her frustration. It's the same combination of feelings we're all experiencing but for her it's so much worse. She loved him, and it was in her arms that he left us all forever. I watch as she lifts the blue baseball cap of its hook on the wall and holds it to her nose inhaling the smell of him and I hear the tiny strangled cry that comes from deep in her throat. I've never seen her quite so broken, quite so crushed.
You gotta be strong
To walk these streets And keep from falling So when you're not Just let yourself cry
He'd been the reason she joined us. None of us had any doubt about that but since then she's fought to keep us all on our feet. She's been our strength, our first call, the reason we've not fallen foul of the mud slinging rumour mill that is DC She crumbles into the soft white couch and I go to her. "It's OK" I tell her even though I know it isn't and it never will be again "It's OK, just let it out."
You've been working hard Just trying to pay the rent Trying to draw the line Between who you are And who you invent
She sobs into my shoulder, eventually looking into my eyes with a depth of pain in her eyes that makes my blood run cold.
"Why do we do it Leo?" she asks as I brush a stray hair out of her eyes and struggle to find an answer for the eternal question. "We work so damn hard, we spend our lives in this building creating the public face of government and we justify it by saying it's only for a while. We'll have lives again when we get out of here. This is the most important thing right now. We can live later. We're not old, in 4 years we'll sleep late, read the books we want to read, see the plays we want to see, be the people we want to be. We were going to do so much. We were going to live when this was over. Where's the justice Leo? Why the hell do we bother?"
But if you throw a stone Something's gonna shatter somewhere We're all so fragile We're all so scared
The world in which we live is made of glass and I know all too well how the slightest thing can send it shattering into a million unrecognisable pieces. She's right and I know we're all thinking the same thing. He wasn't an old man, not a kid but too young to one minute be shouting at the typists and the next dying in his lover's arms. Every one of us is questioning our own lives and everyone one of us will forever be left with the scene. That scene. We'll wake up at night to the sound of his cry as pain captured his chest, his arm, his whole body. We'll all see her run from her office calling his name, fall to the ground begging him to speak to her and cradling him in her arms as the paramedics ran past us. We'll all be haunted by the blood-curdling scream that came from the very heart of her as the declared him dead at the scene. It rocked us all, left us frightened and questioning, but her it crushed. Her it's destroying. I have no answer for her, no way to make it better, no words can ever change it and no words can ease her pain.
Say you wanna learn How to live your life without tears Well we've been trying to do this For thousands of years.
"I can't do this any more" she says suddenly getting to her feet staring at me, breaking me heart as I try to find a way to dull the edges of her pain. "I just don't want to, it's all too hard, it's all too painful."
I know she refers to being here, being in the building, walking past the scene of her horror day in and day out. I know she's tired of tears, tired of pain, tired of coping.
"There's no easy way out of this" I tell her in my gentlest tone "You have to let yourself feel everything you're feeling, if there was another way someone would have found it by now."
She looks at me and for a minute I think she's about to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. That's she's about to blow up, explode, tell me I'm mad and to get the hell out. But she doesn't, she no longer has the strength.
So go on and cry Ophelia It's the only thing to do sometimes.
I can't move fast enough to catch her as she falls sobbing to the floor. Instead I go to her, wrap my arms around her and hold her as she cries the tears of a woman who has lost her reason to live. A woman who hasn't just lost her partner, her lover, her centre, but also the belief that had made her professional life worthwhile. The belief that what we do is for the greater good and that it's only for a while. That there's life after the White House.
Know I'm crying too Right there with you It's alright, everybody cries
We lie there for a few seconds before her wails turn to sobs and I realise I'm cry too. In that moment there is nothing but the pain of a lost friend, a lost colleague, a good man and a soul too young to leave us. I know that at the same time all over the West Wing people cry there own tears at the loss of the assurance that there's life after government. Now we know that for some of s there isn't, some, like Josh, will leave physically wounded, some like CJ, emotionally crushed, and some like Toby won't ever leave at all. Suddenly the world is a very different place.
Everybody cries Ophelia It's the only thing to do sometimes It's alright Ophelia Everybody Cries.
Something went wrong
You're not laughing It's not so easy now To get you to smile
I stand in the office door and look in at her, she's sitting in the soft leather chair and is running her hands over the objects on the desk. Tears are leaving salty trails on her cheeks as she stares into space and in the silence I can feel her agony, her anger, her frustration. It's the same combination of feelings we're all experiencing but for her it's so much worse. She loved him, and it was in her arms that he left us all forever. I watch as she lifts the blue baseball cap of its hook on the wall and holds it to her nose inhaling the smell of him and I hear the tiny strangled cry that comes from deep in her throat. I've never seen her quite so broken, quite so crushed.
You gotta be strong
To walk these streets And keep from falling So when you're not Just let yourself cry
He'd been the reason she joined us. None of us had any doubt about that but since then she's fought to keep us all on our feet. She's been our strength, our first call, the reason we've not fallen foul of the mud slinging rumour mill that is DC She crumbles into the soft white couch and I go to her. "It's OK" I tell her even though I know it isn't and it never will be again "It's OK, just let it out."
You've been working hard Just trying to pay the rent Trying to draw the line Between who you are And who you invent
She sobs into my shoulder, eventually looking into my eyes with a depth of pain in her eyes that makes my blood run cold.
"Why do we do it Leo?" she asks as I brush a stray hair out of her eyes and struggle to find an answer for the eternal question. "We work so damn hard, we spend our lives in this building creating the public face of government and we justify it by saying it's only for a while. We'll have lives again when we get out of here. This is the most important thing right now. We can live later. We're not old, in 4 years we'll sleep late, read the books we want to read, see the plays we want to see, be the people we want to be. We were going to do so much. We were going to live when this was over. Where's the justice Leo? Why the hell do we bother?"
But if you throw a stone Something's gonna shatter somewhere We're all so fragile We're all so scared
The world in which we live is made of glass and I know all too well how the slightest thing can send it shattering into a million unrecognisable pieces. She's right and I know we're all thinking the same thing. He wasn't an old man, not a kid but too young to one minute be shouting at the typists and the next dying in his lover's arms. Every one of us is questioning our own lives and everyone one of us will forever be left with the scene. That scene. We'll wake up at night to the sound of his cry as pain captured his chest, his arm, his whole body. We'll all see her run from her office calling his name, fall to the ground begging him to speak to her and cradling him in her arms as the paramedics ran past us. We'll all be haunted by the blood-curdling scream that came from the very heart of her as the declared him dead at the scene. It rocked us all, left us frightened and questioning, but her it crushed. Her it's destroying. I have no answer for her, no way to make it better, no words can ever change it and no words can ease her pain.
Say you wanna learn How to live your life without tears Well we've been trying to do this For thousands of years.
"I can't do this any more" she says suddenly getting to her feet staring at me, breaking me heart as I try to find a way to dull the edges of her pain. "I just don't want to, it's all too hard, it's all too painful."
I know she refers to being here, being in the building, walking past the scene of her horror day in and day out. I know she's tired of tears, tired of pain, tired of coping.
"There's no easy way out of this" I tell her in my gentlest tone "You have to let yourself feel everything you're feeling, if there was another way someone would have found it by now."
She looks at me and for a minute I think she's about to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. That's she's about to blow up, explode, tell me I'm mad and to get the hell out. But she doesn't, she no longer has the strength.
So go on and cry Ophelia It's the only thing to do sometimes.
I can't move fast enough to catch her as she falls sobbing to the floor. Instead I go to her, wrap my arms around her and hold her as she cries the tears of a woman who has lost her reason to live. A woman who hasn't just lost her partner, her lover, her centre, but also the belief that had made her professional life worthwhile. The belief that what we do is for the greater good and that it's only for a while. That there's life after the White House.
Know I'm crying too Right there with you It's alright, everybody cries
We lie there for a few seconds before her wails turn to sobs and I realise I'm cry too. In that moment there is nothing but the pain of a lost friend, a lost colleague, a good man and a soul too young to leave us. I know that at the same time all over the West Wing people cry there own tears at the loss of the assurance that there's life after government. Now we know that for some of s there isn't, some, like Josh, will leave physically wounded, some like CJ, emotionally crushed, and some like Toby won't ever leave at all. Suddenly the world is a very different place.
Everybody cries Ophelia It's the only thing to do sometimes It's alright Ophelia Everybody Cries.