He hadn’t been home a day before
He found that his wife had died,
The doctor said it was sudden, that
There was something wrong inside.
He couldn’t be more specific till
The autopsy was done,
He’d have to wait for a week for that,
‘It’s the same for everyone.’

He went on back to an empty home
And then he gave way to grief,
It wasn’t as if he had a friend
To offer him some relief,
He’d been away on the ocean swell
On a ***** from Amsterdam,
For six months out of eleven when
He should have been home, with Pam.

A sailor’s life is a lonely life
He had known that from the start,
He possibly shouldn’t have taken a wife
When they’d be so far apart,
For seven years they had worked it out
And his wife had said she’d cope,
But loneliness is a dreadful thing
When you’re living your life in hope.

He’d loved her well and she loved him too
In their sentimental way,
She’d managed to hide her tears each time
That his ship had sailed away,
But once he had seen the autopsy
It had torn him quite apart.
It seems his wife had despaired of dreams
And died of a broken heart.

He didn’t go back to sea at once
But he hung around in bars
And managed to get himself so drunk
That all he could see was stars,
He thought his grief would diminish as
The days had turned into years,
But love for him didn’t finish, it
Just seemed to work in reverse.

He even took down her pictures, and
He locked them all in a drawer,
He didn’t want the reminder of
What he had lost before,
But life is a game of chances and
It never will be denied,
He met a nurse when he found her purse
And something lit up inside.

It seemed her job was a lot like his
She was always working shifts,
They met whenever they could, and he
Found he was buying gifts,
He went away on a ***** again
But just one month at a time,
And she was waiting when he returned
Like a welcome carafe of wine.

He spent some time at the cemetery
To honour his wife, his Pam,
And she asked if she could come along
To which he had said, ‘You can.’
He wed the girl in the early Spring
And he found a job ashore,
And swore he’d never go back to sea,
She couldn’t have loved him more.

David Lewis Paget