Drake and Yebba-Yebba’s Heartbreak
To the naked ear, or perhaps to someone unfamiliar with Yebba and her music, Yebba’s Heartbreak sounds like a love song dedicated to a romantic partner. But being familiar with her artistry and knowing how much of her music has been shaped by the loss of her mother to suicide, I hear something entirely different.I hear a daughter and I hear grief. I hear love searching for somewhere to land.
Although the circumstances surrounding our losses differ, having recently lost my father unexpectedly, I find myself identifying with the emotions woven throughout this song. I can hear it from the perspective of a daughter mourning her parent, but I can also hear it from the perspective of a parent who simply wanted to know that he was loved.
“How much better can I show my love for you?”Toward the end of his life, my father often expressed feeling underappreciated. In conversations over the years, he would mention how his parents doted on us, his children, in ways he didn’t always feel they doted on him. It wasn’t necessarily that he believed love was absent. He just wanted to experience it differently and he wanted to hear it and be reassured. Sometimes, all he wanted was to just hear the word. Love.
When I broke the news of his passing to my grandmother, she cried hysterically. Through her tears, she said something that has stayed with me ever since: “He didn’t think I loved him or appreciated him, but I did. Who’s going to take care of us now?” I think about this moment every time I hear this song. Because how much better could we have shown our love for him? There’s a difference between knowing you love someone and knowing that they feel loved by you.“I do, I do, I do.” is a promise and a reassurance. Like an answer to a question someone has been asking their entire life.
The next line goes, “You may not know right where you’re going but I do, I do, I do”.That’s more reassurance about where my dad is going. My father passed so unexpectedly and that could seem like there was no opportunity to prepare, tie up loose ends, or have chance to make everything right before leaving this earthly realm. I know there were things he was still working through, responsibilities he was still carrying, and relationships he was still navigating so I find comfort in believing that none of those things followed him into the next life. I believe he’s somewhere better than here. The weight of the world is no longer resting on his shoulders and he’s not responsible for making sure everybody and everything is taken care of and he doesn’t have to stress.
There’s an irony I can’t ignore in the title of this song, Yebba’s Heartbreak. My father passed away from complications involving his heart and here I am, listening to a song about heartbreak while grieving a man whose heart quite literally gave out. His stopped and mine is broken.
Next the song goes, “And all the times you wasn't chosen, well, I'll make it up to you All of the feelings you're not showing When your river's overflowing, mmm.It's the truth, swear to you I do, I do, I do, I do, I do”. This part of the song feels personal because I know my father spent portions of his life feeling as though he wasn’t chosen. Not necessarily unloved, but overlooked. I cannot rewrite those experiences or change the way he felt but I can continue choosing him. I recognize that our relationship is different now that he is no longer in this earthly realm, but I refuse to believe that our relationship ended when his life did. He’s still my daddy. The way we experience one another has changed, certainly, but the love hasn’t. “I’ll make it up “to him by continuing to choose him. By remembering his stories, honoring his existence, and recognizing the pieces of him that live within me because we are the same.
I interpret the “rivers overflowing” in two distinct ways. My father was going to make sure everything was taken care of, regardless of what it required of him. As his parents aged and his father became ill, he remained someone they could depend on. Even when his own capacity may have been stretched thin, he continued showing up. He would take it on the chin, carry the weight, and figure it out. I wonder how often we confuse someone’s ability to handle everything with their capacity to keep doing so. I also hear that overflowing river as tears. The emotions that don’t always make it into conversation. The exhaustion and frustration that someone may only allow themselves to express when nobody else is around.
Yebba paints a celestial imagery when she sings “And all that you are I do. My single line of stars in noon. Reflection of the very moon I do. I do, I do, I do.” Think about what it means to keep going when your whole world has been turned upside down. My daddy meant so much to me. He still does. And I can only hope that during his time here, he knew just how much. Stars appearing at noon as a glimmer of hope in the middle of my grief. Something that reminds me that even when everything around me feels unbearably heavy, there is still light somewhere. This loss was earth shattering and I don’t mean that lightly. It disrupted my routines, changed the dynamics of my family, and took a piece of me that I will never get back in the same way. I’ve had to show up for my family in ways I never anticipated having to, at least not this soon. I’ve found myself navigating responsibilities and circumstances that I thought I’d have more time before encountering and while I’ve been doing my best to keep it together, grief has a way of reminding you that strength doesn’t exempt you from sadness. I’m quite literally in shambles writing this but as my readers know, connecting my experiences to music is what I love to do and I know that I need the release.
Sadness is very tricky. It doesn’t care how much you have to do, how many people are depending on you, or how well you’ve managed to hold yourself together throughout the day. It finds you anyway. With a loss this significant I know I can’t outrun it. I have faith that my father is still guiding me.I think about those stars at noon. They exist even when we cannot see them and their invisibility doesn’t make them any less real and that’s how I choose to understand my dad’s presence in my life right now. Somewhere in the ethers, I imagine him reminding me that I can do this and that reassurance feels so familiar because it comes from the very man who gave me so much of who I am. Like I said before, I am him and he is me.
The song ends with the same sentiment it began with. My desire to show my love for him. It goes “Show my love for you. Can I show my love for you?” I didn’t think I would have to ask myself this question so soon. I find myself navigating a love with no physical vessel to go. I can’t stop showing my love so that love will look really different now. It has been 45 days without him and some days my love looks like lighting a white candle for him like I did tonight when the sadness started to consume me and I wanted to leave my friends and come home and talk to him in private. Some days it looks like going through his pictures and laughing at the memories. Some days it looks like me charging his cell phone and sleeping with it. Time will go on and I will continue to show my love by honoring that beautiful and flawed man and recognizing the parts of him that live inside of me. Most importantly I’ll show my love for him by living.
Daddy, I hope you knew how much you meant to me while you were here. I hope you know how much you still mean to me now. I hope wherever you are, you feel the appreciation you longed for and the love that never stopped belonging to you. You took a piece of me when you left this earthly realm, but you left so much of yourself behind in me.
I will spend the rest of my life showing my love for you.
I do. I do. I do.
Listen to Yebba’s Heartbreak
