Dear John Prine,

My heart has felt heavy ever since the world lost you last Tuesday on April 7, 2020 when you were only 73 years young.  Although the world has lost almost 121,000 souls to the Coronavirus as of this morning (Tuesday, April 14th), for me, you remain the most devastating loss of them all.  We never personally met, but you crawled into my heart to inhabit a space as intimate as a father figure.  “I feel like the only person in the world who ever had a [songwriter]like you.[1]”

I held my breath when I found an article about Bill Withers death that referenced your hospitalization. My God, John Prine.  Just six months ago, I saw your Tree of Forgiveness 2019 World Tour stop at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, NC.  It was my most sacred concert of them all because I got to bring my Daddy.  The man who first introduced me to you back when I came into this world.  I was weaned on of some of your early tunes including Hello In There, Sam Stone, and Saddle In The Rain.  I later learned how to play some of these when I got old enough to strum along with Daddy, because I was “Daddy’s Little Pumpkin[2]”.  I want to hug Daddy so bad, but due to the virus that took you, I can’t.  Not for right now.

Let me fill you in on some Missing Years: I awoke from a coma the summer after I turned 30, suddenly a widow who had survived the car crash which killed my husband.  Now I had to learn how to live my life with a traumatic brain injury.  During my lengthy hospital stay, Daddy played my favorite tune Angel From Montgomeryon his guitar for me and an audience of hospital visitors.  “You made me feel stronger.  You made me love longer than anyone in the whole wide world[3]”.  This song became an anthem for me as I relearned how to speak.  Unlike Jesus, I have not yet found many of my Missing Years. But as you sang it “That's the way that the world goes 'round[4].”

I have been wearing my concert t-shirt and hat a lot these days, my keepsakes from the last time I saw you.  The lyrics in Souvenirs have new meaning for me now: 

Memories they can't be boughten
They can't be won at carnivals for free
Well, it took me years 
To get those souvenirs
And I don't know how they slipped away from me

I do not recall how to play guitar anymore, but your death may inspire me to pick it up again.  John, you opened my heart and millions of others, and you will live on in the lyrics you continue to inspire and your songs that we will continue to sing.  The world may find comfort knowing“He Was in Heaven Before He Died[5]”.

“Turnin' out the light[6]”,
Angela Leigh Tucker

[1]Prine, John, Unlonely. Oh Boy Records, 1991

[2]Prine, John, Daddy’s Little Pumpkin. Oh Boy Records, 1991

[3]Prine, John, Unlonely. Oh Boy Records, 1991

[4]Prine, John, That’s the Way The World Goes Round. Asylum Records, 1978

[5]Prine, John, He Was In Heaven Before He Died. Atlantic Records, 1975

[6]Prine, John, Clocks And Spoons, Atlantic Records, 1972