I lost you before I was born
Those in charge I could not warn
Maybe that’s why my heart is so afraid
In the womb I had no say
Helpless as I was being made

She gave me life, then she took it away
Broken and wounded and so afraid
Finding something from another man
While you served in a war like Viet Nam
How else could she have made the choices she made?

You never stopped loving her in spite of it all
When a father loves the mother even after a great fall
Is the greatest gift a daughter can see
Feeling the love and the power to believe
Knowing if only she’d trusted what she’d had

It’s whisky under the bridge having gone separate ways
Sons and daughters and grandkids to my dismay
Squeezing me out as if I did not exist
Twisting me into an identity, not for me but against
Refusing to acknowledge who I really am

Forgiveness is healing, no need to carry that burden
But one needs to be sorry, of this I am certain
Without it there is no great story of repentance
That’s the difference between Peter and Judas
I lost you before I was born