Dear Barbara, Thanks for not taking my head off -- not only is putting a song forward inherently emotional, but the subject is maybe even more emotional.

Everything you write in your description adds to the song. Can some of it get in the song? I think your description of Sara at the Easter picnic is unutterably moving -- maybe to reapply what I said, she was already gone before she was gone. I think it is interesting that your description, even as prose, has such a powerful undercurrent to it -- but you see that picture and what it meant when you sing, and we don't. Given that you have cut something that is hokey, you obviously know where the dangers lie -- it would certainly be nice to have a verse with some of those details in it -- you have such an eye for that.

There are problems with that, of course: one of the good things about the song as it stands is the claustrophobia -- you are in this tight house, and kids get crushed, and no one is supposed to know, etc. But ....

Also, it is interesting that in your notes there is a movement back and forth about whether the song is in part about your relationship to Lisa. In your first reply, I got a sense that the song was about Lisa. Maybe that is part of the puzzle -- is the song in mourning for Lisa, for Sara, or for the whole situation? I don't say it can't be about all of them, but it may be that weighting it towards Sara is what you are trying to avoid, because the song is about the fact that "Sara is gone" as a result, and not about Sara. In that sense, staying outside the characters is right, and staying away from saying more about Sara is also right. So your original impulse is right.

Anyway, I apologise for general impertinence -- it is hell to write, to get the balance right, and everything. I am still haunted by your description, though. This is a terrible question to ask, but I will ask it anyway. It is not clear from your description if Sara ran through the sprinkler by herself, or had to be carried or led. If she couldn't even run through a sprinkler by herself, that is a horrible detail that no one could think up.

Yours, Peter T.