Songs » Never Stopped Loving You
What are the chances I would see you here today?
My flight delayed on account of rain.
Forty years—a long time to believe
I'd never see you again,
But somehow, you still look the same.
Maybe I should have let you go on your way.
But I said hello, you smiled in your easy way.
Forty years and only
One thing left to say:
I never stopped loving you.
It all ended so mysteriously. You said,
You "just stopped loving" me
I still don't know what that means
How was it so easy for you?
Was there something I could have done?
I guess I've wondered all along
Did you ever really love me at all?
But I, I never stopped loving you!
Well, life is short, and time has carried away
All of my anger, my hurt and some of the pain
Forty years, that's half our lives,
Don't know how much remains—
It sure is good to see you again.
And I guess I will love you 'til the end.
Story of the Song
Karl & Judy, 1977: Met at the Argonaut Inn & Art Center, a unique place, magical, a communally run restaurant where college kids could take time away and work / live in this remarkable place, the old headquarters of the famous Argonaut gold mine, abandoned decades before.
Judy and I were blissfully happy for many months, maybe a year. Then things changed for me, old doubts about myself that caused me to doubt my relationship with her. I was too young to fully explore the feelings, but the magic had disappeared.
Judy decided to move to San Francisco, and did. Around that time, the Argonaut Inn caught fire and burned to the ground. A chapter in our lives was now truly over.
Judy and I kept in touch for quite a while, even visited several times, had intimate moments, even when we had other lovers. We never lost touch, though we did drift apart. Eventually, grad school, marriage, kids happened, but we still stayed in touch with Christmas and birthday cards.
The details of our relationship, now 40 years in the past, never got discussed. Then one day, 40 years after the fact, I wrote a heart-felt journal about Judy, reminiscing, and appreciating her in retrospect. I sent a copy of that journal to her, an act that precipitated a meaningful re-acquaintance.
> The Longer Version
Judy and I met at the Argonaut Inn and Art Center, a one-of-a-kind place where young people could take a gap year or two, work at the communally run restaurant, get paid with room and board and tips, live in the old headquarters of the Argonaut gold mine in Jackson CA. It was a blissful time for those of us fortunate enough to be there.
It was 1977. I had moved from cold and dreary Ann Arbor Michigan to a lovely little town in the foothills of the sierras where it was warm and sunny, and I was in CALIFORNIA. My oh my. During the day in the restaurant, Judy baked the cakes, and I chopped onions and fixed stuff. In the evenings, serving dinner to the public, she waited tables and I ran the dishwasher. After hours, I sat at the baby grand and wrote songs. Lots of them, almost all of them to Judy.
We fell in love on the road to Indian Grinding Rocks in Volcano CA, where we hitchhiked on one of our days off. We were blissfully in love, giddy with happiness. For many months, almost a year. But things changed, or, I should say, I changed. Let some old doubts and demons return and poison what was a beautiful thing. We broke up. The Argonaut Inn burned down in a catastrophic fire; Judy moved to San Francisco; I moved to the mountains.
But we kept in touch, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but never lost touch. She got married, had a family. I got married, had a family. All along, we kept in touch. Sometimes barely, but we never lost touch. Kids graduated college. A divorce. An empty nest. Life goes on, and still we kept in touch. All the way into our 60s. Aging professionals: a therapist and a teacher, emailing once or twice a year: Christmas cards, birthday wishes.
In one fateful email, Judy posed the question: “So, what happened, Karl? How did it happen? Why did we break up? I took some time to consider, avoided the question initially, but she persisted.
“What happened, Karl?”
I gave her the best answer I could, the one thing that was true, but saying it only stated the obvious, without leading anywhere or resolving anything. “I guess I just stopped loving you,” I offered.
“Since those days,” she said, “we’ve both had lovers. I sure have, and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving any of them.” With that, she seemed to be saying two things: that I wasn’t any more important than the other men she’s had; and that she still loved me. But something about the way she said ‘never stopped loving any of them’ seemed like it was code for me, Karl, suggesting discreetly that she’d not stopped loving me, that she still loved me.
I conceived a story where two ex-lovers meet at an airport by chance, forty years after their romance, which ended ambiguously and unresolved. The meeting brings back a flood of memories for the narrator, whose feelings have not changed in all those years: “Somehow, you still look the same,” she remarks wistfully.