For a Time Like This: Eleanor May
A music podcast featuring a new song by Gord Johnson, "Eleanor May", based on his experiences working as a Spiritual Health Practitioner at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre, which also serves as our province’s trauma centre. Gord recorded the song at Signpost Studio, with engineering by Murray Pulver and mixing by Dave Zeglinski. Along with Gord's vocals, guitar and harmonica, Marc Arnould played piano, Murray Pulver provided acoustic and dobro guitars, and both Murray and Steve Bell added background vocals.
Gord has provided three other songs for this series: Before the Ending of the Day, O What Love, and Can't Take My Soul. Gord's 1996 album Stubble and Hay is still easily available on Amazon.
Eleanor May
My name is Eleanor May
I live in north Winnipeg
But I’m not there anymore
I’m on a hospital ward
It’s just six blocks from home but it feels like a million miles
They say my heart ain’t that strong
They say I don’t have that long
They bring my meals on a tray
And give me pills for the pain
But there ain’t no pill gonna take this kind of pain away
I want to go home
Back to anything and everything that ever meant something to me
Where my heart and my soul and my body are longing to be
I want to go home
I want to go home
I lie awake every night
And chase the thoughts racing by
I get a lump in my gut
And feel my chest tighten up
And watch the drip bag counting down the time that’s left in my life
And when I finally fall
Into my morphine dreams
I am at home with my kind
Re-living all the right scenes
And dream I breathe my last breath staring out into the open sky
I want to go home
Back to anything and everything that ever meant something to me
Where I can lay to rest this broken body and finally be free
I want to go home
I want to go home
Who will listen to me
In these darkened days?
Who will hold my hand in the night
And tell me my life mattered?
My name is Eleanor May
Please understand what I’m saying
My name is Eleanor May
Can you not hear what I’m saying’?
I’m just six blocks from home but it feels like a million miles
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