EVERY LAST ONE
5:02
Lyrics & Music by Amanda Udis-Kessler ©1991, 2003

An affirmation of the worth and dignity of every single person in a time when such affirmations are profoundly difficult to maintain.

Click here to listen


It should have been another boring day of work.
At least the view was awesome from the hundredth floor.
A dozen lengthy printouts were awaiting her.
She couldn't quite believe it when she heard the roar.
She never even made it to the stairwell. Heat and smoke can travel quickly.
Her picture hangs off lampposts in Manhattan, pots of flowers underneath

For every last one is precious. Each life lost
Leaves behind a world with fewer colors.
Lights dim, sounds fade, healing falters;
Each day our hearts a little smaller.
Who will calculate the cost? (chorus)

He knew he should have never left Jalalabad.
The Kabul of his childhood was a combat zone
But how was he to simply leave his father there?
He sneaked through town and prayed he would be left alone.
He never heard the bomb or saw the building falling fast in his direction.
His father doesn't even have a picture to remind him of his son

But every last one. . .

How tall we stand, America the Beautiful.
How righteously they claim to fight their holy war.
How thoroughly we make each other enemies.
How much we are like them. How much like us they are.
Oh, may there be a day when we're all willing to be ordinary people,
When all of us see pictures of each other and we grieve for what is gone

For every last one . . .

Yes, every last one . . .

 

Return to Into the Gray home