‘Fix You’ by Coldplay

Warning: this post contains strong emotions.

Jill writes:

In 2007-8, when we had a difficult time as a family I would sometimes find my husband sitting listening to this song, with tears running down his own face… just listening and crying.

His cousin (aged 28) was killed in the 7/7 bombings. She was sitting in the carriage where the bomb went off and there was no chance of survival. There was nothing anybody could do.

Her parents asked for none of us to talk about her and I’m not going to here except to say that she was an extraordinary person (you could read more in her memory https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12011102) and that she is still missed.

This piece of music, for me, is one which has helped, since then, to deal with any difficult situations. Until I decided to write this I didn’t even know what the lyrics were. ‘I will try to fix you’ was the only phrase I remembered. There was absolutely nothing that could be done. The fire had literally ignited her bones. And yet… we wanted to fix it. We really wanted to fix it. This song tuned in with that longing and that helplessness.

We all want to fix it… for those we love, for the world. This Covid-19 pandemic has reminded us of our vulnerabilities as a human race. We do feel ‘stuck in reverse’. We also want to fix other people… and really we can’t.

In films those who are called ‘fixers’ are those who are known to be people who claim to do this and always come undone. They are not the ones with real power but the ones who try to convince others that they are! For me it is turning out to be a life-time’s work to learn that only God can help people truly fix things in their own lives.

‘Fix You’ will always remind me of those traumatic experiences (of hearing The News, of realizing it was our family’s news, of the funeral, of trying to support others through bereavement) but since then, the song has become one which helps me with other sadnesses. Until I started to write this I didn’t know that the song was performed at the benefit concert ‘One Love Manchester’ – dedicated to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017… but it does not surprise me. The music itself is healing as it brings the tears which register the realities of sadness and make the beginnings of real change possible. We can then begin to look for the ‘lights which will guide us home’

At Helen’s funeral the vicar, who was a friend, mentioned that Helen had supported him after a difficult funeral he had to take for a child, “She said to me: ‘In tragedy, it is never God’s will. God’s is the first heart to break and God is the first to shed a tear.’”

Find out more about Coldplay at https://www.coldplay.com/