Forgiveness, Fathers, and a New Billy Joel Song

Billy Joel’s recently released “Turn the Lights Back On” hit me with a depth I wasn’t expecting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan. I hum “River of Dreams” at random in the car several times a week. But it was something about the emotional heft of the song’s plea for forgiveness that honestly made me gasp and reach for my heart. When I heard the line “I’m late, but I’m here right now / is there still time for forgiveness?” I knew those were the words I had been waiting to hear all my life from my estranged biological father; the man who abandoned me as a baby, and who to this day refuses any contact. This is the song I want him to sing to me, word for word.

But he’s not the only one who needs to apologize with feeling and beauty. At the age of 41, I’m beginning to realize I have big, big things to be sorry for; ways in which I haven’t shown up for my wife and our children, ways in which I’ve hurt myself, friends I’ve left alone. This song, with its wise and considered regret, helped me see that more clearly than I ever have, and begin to wade into the sacred waters of asking for forgiveness.

This new release from Joel also taught me something about my intimate relationship to music. His voice had a tremendously soothing effect on me, and as I felt it wash over me, I understood that all my life I’ve looked to male vocalists of a certain demeanor as father figures. I’ve turned to their songs for soothing, for wisdom, and for help. In the complete absence of my biological father, and considering how unsafe I felt around the adults around me, singers like Cat Stevens and Juan Luis Guerra played an outsized role in my inner life, standing as best they could in the humongous father void inside me, a burden unfair to both of us. Billy Joel was one of these lullaby fathers, and I’m so grateful he sang to me one more time.