“I cannot move a mountain now;
I can no longer run.
I cannot be who I was then:
In a way, I never was.”

Then I began following Rosanne Cash on Twitter and she graciously replied to me frequently. It really personalized my perception of her. I realize I’m still just another of her thousands of Twitter followers and even larger number of fans, but to me she’s just as much an online pal as the various people I’ve “met” online with Crohn’s from around the world. I read Composed (she was even kind enough to read and tweet a response to my review of it) and found that the online relationship really colored my reading of her memoirs.

Back to “September When It Comes.” It’s no longer a song about and with Johnny Cash to me, but rather an inspired work of tremendous emotional poignancy crafted by someone that means something to me (not in a creepy, steal-her-recycling way). It hits me now in a way quite a lot like that awful, helpless feeling I get at funerals knowing that there’s not a thing I can do to assuage the pain of my friends or family.

It also reminds me how much I admire songwriters, who are willing and able to explore such deeply personal experiences and then put them on display for the entire world, knowing we will interpret, adopt, criticize, even ridicule, malign and ignore them. Most people I know don’t even want their Facebook profile public. Even if they could be roused to this level of introspection, they’d blanch at the notion of exhibiting their work for everyone else.

Probably one of the greatest songs and duets of all time.