Parting
Bob Nolan
Original copyright: December 5, 1972
Refrain:
All my life will fall away if you leave me here today.
All I ask is “won’t you stay and love me just for one more day"?”
If you must leave,
Let me remind you of the joys and tears that bind you
To me still.
You may think you’ll not remember all the treasured hours so tender,
But you will.
Some lonely night, you’ll wake and wonder what it was disturbed your slumber.
That will be me,
Stealing through your mind and heart, dear, just as long as we’re apart, dear.
Wait and see.
Midnight strands and lonely beaches where we’d meet beyond the reaches
Of this world.
Whispering pools of ebb tide water where the voice of Neptune’s daughter
Sings and swirls.
Through the rock cliff walls and towers, wild the warm wind sea spray hours
We would share.
If you remember all of this while you are gone, my love you miss,
I’ll still be there.
ABOUT THIS SONG
"Parting" is one of Bob Nolan's last compositions - registered for copyright December 5, 1972. He wrote many love songs, most of them stressing or hinting at loneliness. One day when Bob was showing Tommy Garrett his piles of compositions, lyrics and poems, an amazed Garrett sorted out a few to take home to consider for recording. He was working with Jim Nabors at the time and talked Jim into recording "Relative Man" and "Parting" for Bob. He chose another two ("Wandering" and "Old Home Town") for Bob to record himself on his last LP, The Sound of a Pioneer"
Who was this woman he was writing about? Many of Bob's fans have searched for clues but perhaps his grandson is right -
“I must also wonder where his music and lyrics came from at such an early stage in his life. Who was that love he longed for all those years? Or was it, as I've always thought, a search for a true love that he never ever found? I have a theory, though. He may have started to write about the love of a particular woman – maybe Pearl, maybe someone else before her or someone after her - his first love. But, as the years went by, he wrote about the love that he once felt; the desire to have that first love still in his life. That sort of love never comes twice in anyone’s heart, a love that is so clear and clean of all life’s trials and tribulations. In those younger years there are no responsibilities. Money isn’t factored into life yet. You are immersed in nothing but youth and love. That feeling and yearning after long years becomes an entity of its own. So, maybe there was no one woman he was writing about, rather a feeling that he had once experienced in his youth. And in his songs that feeling lives on.”
—Calin Coburn, Bob Nolan's grandson, 2000
SHEET MUSIC
We do not have any sheet music for this song, just lead sheets.