My mother passed away the week after she and my father celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary. They had just began planning a special cruise trip for their 50th. As we planned for her farewell, my father stated “I know what i”m doing today, tomorrow and next week, but what am I doing for the rest of my life?”
A girl challenged her boyfriend to prove his love by living a day without her, no contact for 24 hours. If he passed, she said she’d love him forever. The boyfriend agreed, never texting her or calling her, also not knowing she was dying with only 24 hours left to live.
After a day passed, he excitedly went to see her. “I did it baby!” Instead of her beautiful face, he saw her lifeless body with a note – “You did it baby … now please do it every day. I love you.”
A girl desperately wanted the love of her life to propose, waiting years for him to make a commitment. On Valentine’s Day as they headed to a fancy dinner out, he presented her with a cuddly teddy bear. With an anger fueled by impatience, she threw it out the car window. He turned the car around to go pick up the bear from the roadside and was hit by a car and killed.
At his funeral, full of guilt, she hugged the bear tightly and the voice box inside said “Marry me.” Tucked inside the bear was a diamond ring. She never recovered, living her life sad and alone.
A young man grew up adoring and idolizing his equally devoted mother, vowing to someday be able to give her all she richly deserved. Shortly after reaching adulthood, he hit the big time, finding fame and fortune. Within a couple of short years, she unexpectedly died. All he felt he’d achieved suddenly had little purpose.
“I’d rather give everything that I own in this world, than to be all alone and unloved.”
Life is filled with countless sad stories, tales of loss and bad decisions and wronged motives and unfair consequences. Bad things happening to good people has been questioned since time began. Second chances forgone in favor of grudges and an unforgiving spirit are far too common.
I can’t help but wonder what Elvis’ thoughts were when presented with this song, recording it in early 1960 shortly after his return from the Army. He often denied his songs were auto biographical but this one has always given me a different feel.
Elvis Presley was far from unloved or alone, in fact, just the opposite, worldwide. He had every reason financially and fame wise to be sitting on top of the world. But did this song hit him deep within or do we just read too much into things?
His early 60’s voice is tinged with a bit of soulful yearning that is difficult to fabricate, an edge to his new maturity with a quality of a youthful ache. It’s as if the words come from a deeper place of an experience he wished he’d never had.
Elvis was young, barely 25 and life at his feet. I love the emotion of this song, real or fabricated but equally convincing either way.
Truth is truth – the things that count in this world have far more worth than the the temporal things that can slip on by. It was true then and it’s true now, more than ever.
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Thrill of Your Love
(Written by Stanley Kesler)
I have wished for the wealth
Of a great millionaire
I have reached for a bright star above
But the thrill of it all
To me seems so small
When compared to the thrill of your love
I’d rather give (I’d rather give) everything (Give everything)
That I own (that I own) in this world (Own this world)
Than to be all alone and unloved
For no earthly price and no sacrifice
Is too much to give
For your love
I’d rather give (I’d rather give) everything (Give everything)
That I own (that I own) in this world (Own this world)
Than to be all alone and unloved
For no earthly price and no sacrifice
Is too much to give
For your love
Recorded 4/3/1960 Studio B Nashville, first released on Elvis is Back
