Dylan Garity - Resurrection lyrics

This is the story of my grandfather: When he was nineteen years old, his right hand was crushed in a printing press. He was supposed to lose the hand, but a young doctor saved it. Just in time for the war. This is the story of the war: My grandfather repaired tanks. Behind the front lines, away from the cameras he'd pull pieces of dead men from the machines and send the machines back out to the field. This is the story of the war, a decade later: Back then, you didn't talk about depression. There was no such thing as PTSD. When my uncle, age seven asked him who won the war, my grandfather said "Nobody." This is the story of my grandfather, the machinist: I have a newspaper from 1981. A story about the Nobel Prize for Physics. A photograph of the winner, a Harvard man, standing by his machines. This man is not my grandfather. Beneath the photo, my grandfather has written "I designed and built almost everything in this picture." They worked together for ten years. but my grandmother says the physicist never even remembered his name. If you asked that Harvard man, there would be no story of my grandfather, just a pair of disembodied hands This is the problem with stories: They have to leave something out. The editor cuts a line and someone's face fades; the editor says two hundred words or less, and suddenly a whole family goes missing. The spotlight isn't about the light, it's how it makes everything around it dark My grandfather's face is erased from every story. The machines survive and the man who made them doesn't. The machines make the photo, but their maker is out of frame. But we choose where to point the camera. We choose how to tell the story. We can choose which clothing the hero wears. I could tell you this is a story about a soldier. I could tell you this is a story about the blue-collar man but really, this is just the story of my grandfather. I never met him But my family tells me his name. Alfred Franzosa. I know that name might only live in this moment. That there are other stories with greater stakes. But still, I will tell you his name. I will repair this old machine. I will let my grandfather live again because I could not know him while he was living. Once, when he was younger than I am now, his right hand was crushed by a printing press. Crushed by other people's stories. When it healed, he began to build. He used his hands to build tanks and his hands to build cradles His hands were the last thing to touch dead soldiers and the first to touch his newborn sons. He built a good family and that family built me and I use my hands to build his story. The story is not a eulogy. A eulogy seals the casket. A eulogy lets no air out. The story is a resurrection. Jesus was not resurrected by God, he was brought back by the people who told his stories. It does not take a miracle to raise the dead. To leave behind the tombstone and take the name with you.