“I Grieve” by Peter Gabriel

The cover for Peter Gabriel’s 2002 album, “Up.”

Peter Gabriel is not one to shy away from difficult emotions. His 1998 song, “I Grieve,” walks the listener through some of the various stages of grief — beginning with denial. A mournful, evenly paced dirge gives way to the lyrics:

It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
Is just the way that you are tied in
Now there’s no one home

Singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel
Credit: Arnold Newman on petergabriel.com

The English singer-songwriter has repeatedly stated that he considers the purpose of music to be to assist people in processing challenging emotions. “You don’t know how some of the songs are going to hit people,” he said, after two fellow performers credited his music with preventing their suicides, according to Daryl Easlea’s “Without Frontiers: The Life & Music of Peter Gabriel.” Gabriel added, “You realize that it’s like a toolbox full of emotional tools when you put out music and you put some real feeling into it.”

Such depth of feeling is palpable in “I Grieve.” Gabriel gives voice to sentiments that are at once seemingly obvious and commonplace, and yet so rarely heard:

So hard to move on
Still loving what’s gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on

Gabriel, who had wanted to create a song that helped people with the mourning process, released “I Grieve” on the soundtrack to the 1998 film City of Angels, followed by its inclusion on his 2002 album, “Up.” He also performed the song on Larry King Weekend on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, stating that both of his daughters had been present in Manhattan during the disaster.

The Guardian has since identified “I Grieve” as music that “creates perfect conditions for a catharsis.” Despite the mournful, dirge-like beginning, the song shifts halfway through to an upbeat, celebratory acknowledgement of the joys shared in living, loving, and carrying on together:

Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that’s out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust

“I Grieve” is a powerful song for anyone mourning a loss — while acknowledging that, as Gabriel states with repetitious assurance, “Life goes on.”

You can listen to Peter Gabriel singing “I Grieve” in the video below.