Metallica, "No Leaf Clover"

Here's another great song about your life being thrown out of whack without warning. "No Leaf Clover," from Metallica's album S&M, is a collaboration between the band and the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The two entities performed together during a special two-night concert early in 1999.

"No Leaf Clover" is a song that was specifically written for this concert. It's a wonderfully sweeping piece of music, with neither the band nor the orchestra overpowering each other. The story of the song, though, pretty much sums up my life.

Everything is going well for the guy in the song, just as everything was going well with me and my family. However, the wheels come off: "Then it comes to be/the soothing light at the end of your tunnel/was just a freight train coming your way." There is only one way this is going to end...badly. In my case, that train was cancer, and the collision between me and that "train" was a bankruptcy and a divorce. Even now, as I start to put the pieces of my life back together, there's still the feeling that there's a train going to come down the line again, and having to always wonder when the other shoe is going to drop in regards to my cancer is paralyzing at times. My only hope with the path I'm on now is that I get to enjoy the journey for a while before the next problem comes barreling through.

If you want to check out this song and album, click here