{"id":5587,"date":"2026-03-08T14:21:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5587"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:25:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:25:05","slug":"scraps-may-you-always","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5587","title":{"rendered":"Scraps: “May You Always”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t done a piece on scraps in a couple of years, so if you didn\u2019t see it back in 2023, here\u2019s a link to where I define it<\/a>. Basically, stuff that pops into your head without a trigger or other reason. Happens to me all the time. But today I had a weird one.<\/p>\n

While I was grocery shopping, a song popped into my head: \u201cMay You Always,\u201d by the McGuire Sisters. It peaked on the Hot 100 on January 5, 1959. I haven\u2019t heard for a number of years. I liked it (still do) for the Sisters\u2019 voices and harmony. I could hear it as clearly as though it were on the radio. I had it on my college-years 8\u201d reel-to-real off-the-radio mix tapes, and heard it a lot. So it\u2019s no huge surprise that I remembered not only the melody and harmony but also the lyrics.<\/p>\n

Here they are<\/a> if you\u2019re not familiar with the song. (I suspect a lot of my older readers might be.) Here\u2019s the Sisters singing it<\/a>. It\u2019s clearly a person wishing another person well. Given who\u2019s singing, it\u2019s no surprise that I consider the lyric\u2019s viewpoint singer a woman. The lyrics don\u2019t say it out loud, but it sure sounds like a breakup song. The relationship is over, and she\u2019s wishing him all the best.<\/p>\n

But\u2026why did they break up? She\u2019s wishing for him to find someone to love as much as she loves him. So it wasn\u2019t that he found another girlfriend. People break up for other reasons, sure. But then it hit me in the back of the head: She\u2019s dying.<\/em> They love one another deeply, but she\u2019s on her deathbed, saying her goodbyes, with nothing but loving wishes that he continue on with his life and find someone new to love.<\/p>\n

In reading the lyrics now, that interpretation seems obvious to me. Why?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 73. A fair number of my friends have died. You get into your seventies, and that will happen. It\u2019s part of the curve that we\u2019re on. It\u2019s a little odd that about as many women as men in my social circles have died. But that\u2019s how it is. (Two of the women were, egad\u2014murdered<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

I bring this up only as a reminder that getting old means you see others leave this world much more often than when you\u2019re young. But young women die too\u2014and that seems to lie at the emotional core of \u201cMay You Always.\u201d That wouldn\u2019t have occurred to me when I was 30 or 40. Well, it occurs to me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t done a piece on scraps in a couple of years, so if you didn\u2019t see it back in 2023, here\u2019s a link to where I define it. Basically, stuff that pops into your head without a trigger or other reason. Happens to me all the time. But today I had a weird one. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,254],"tags":[276,49],"class_list":["post-5587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","category-scraps","tag-lyrics","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5589,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions\/5589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}