I believe that was Kathy Mattea, if you’re talking about the song where the couple ends up in a nursing home and the woman doesn’t speak until her husband comes to visit her. That was a song based on Mattea’s grandparents (and it always gets to me, too!)
Alan Jackson’s “Remember When” also touches me, especially when one realizes that the song tells the story of his marriage, including the time he and his wife separated. The most touching songs always have some foundation in real life. Which is why I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Alan’s “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?”
And there’s a song by Tracy Lawrence about a man going off to war and he tells his buddies to keep going to the high school football games and other things and if anything happens to him, “find someone for Amy” (his fiancee)… and at the end of the song, you know he didn’t come back because the song says “we haven’t missed a single home game… I introduced Amy to a good friend… but, you know, she’s just not ready.”
My husband CANNOT listen to that song, because… my name is Amy.
And while I normally don’t like the Dixie Chicks, whenever I hear the song “Travelin’ Soldier” I just get choked up:
One Friday night at the football game
The Lord’s Prayer said and the anthem sang,
A man said, "Folks, would you bow your heads,
For a list of local Vietnam dead?"
Crying all alone under the stands
Was the piccolo player in the marching band,
One name read but nobody really cared,
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.
I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy,
Too young, they told her, waitin’ on the love of a travelin’ soldier,
Our love will never end, waitin’ for the soldier to come back again,
Never more to be alone, when a letter says the soldier’s comin’ home.
Okay, I’m a mess for the night! 'bye!
