“Bury My Lovely,” by October Project was finally posted on YouTube a while back – and I was thrilled to find it. I scrolled through the comments. Many people say it is about child abuse, genealogy, unearthing family secrets and ghosts of the past. The adoptees and natural mothers who view it might see and hear relinquishment and adoption in its haunting lyrics and images.

Every time I watch it, my eyes well with tears and goose-bumps cover my skin. For me, it is about abuse, genealogy, family secrets and adoption. And, it’s about ghosts of the past, haunting a girl in a big old house, while her family carries on as if nothing bad ever happened to her.

“A picture worth a thousand lies . . .” is how the chorus begins and, when I hear it, I think of the old family farm I was sent away to so many times, to live with my aunt and uncle. They were good to me, but I was scarred and they didn’t understand, entirely, how and why. The old Victorian house, built by their ancestors and decorated with generations of family photos, felt simultaneously like home and a foreign land. And though my aunt and uncle treated me with compassion and I liked farmlife, living in the house was, of course, always a reminder that not just my first mother, but also my second, had sent me away.

Songs always take us places emotionally, but this one is a doozy for me. You see, it was literally filmed in the house I grew up in – which was quite a bunch of excitement when October Project was singing in the attic and barn, walking up the old, creaky stairs and standing on the veranda. An Impromptu casting made my uncle “the gravedigger,’ burying secrets out by the pond. And, even though I witnessed the making of the video, watching it is entirely too . . . real.

Those who know my story will see what I see in it and others, perhaps, will find a meaning within it that fits their story, but I thought I’d share . . .