Casimir Pulaski Day

Sufjan Stevens narrates the slow death of a high school girlfriend from bone cancer in quiet, exact detail — the prayer circle, the Bible reading, the way his hand shook when he tried to hold hers — and finishes the song with a trumpet solo and a line accusing God directly. It is one of the saddest pop songs ever written and also one of the most matter-of-fact.

The arrangement is almost pastoral. Banjo, acoustic guitar, a small horn section that enters at the end. Stevens refuses melodrama the entire way through — even the accusation at the end is delivered as observation, not complaint. Grief for someone still alive at the moment the song begins, who is not by the time it ends. A specific kind of premature goodbye that no one ever gets to rehearse.