My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” was released in 2006, the same year my father died.
I first learned about the album a few weeks after his death. My friend made me listen to “Cancer,” which, according to him, reminded him of his mom who had died a long time ago.
I took an immediate liking to the song that I listened to it over and over, Googled and memorized its lyrics, and owned it as though it had been written especially for me.
I didn’t even care what it was really about or how its creators wanted it to be understood. Freely, I dissected the song, took its lines apart, and used each of them to fill in the gaps my father had left in my heart.
There were also times when I thought these lines contained messages from him—messages he had failed to utter before breathing his last.
No wonder, I found comfort in the line, “Cause the hardest part of this is leaving you.” This made me believe he would have stayed if he only could.
Around March of the following year, I was finally able to buy a copy of the album in CD form. At first, I was scared to listen to it entirely, given how peculiar its cover art was. Everything about it was so dark that my mother once told me it might have been “demonic” or something.
The album also came with an equally strange poster that I thought was too scary to look at at night. The band members and their pals looked like ghosts on it. They were even with women clad in Victorian dresses and gas masks, which made everything look creepier.
Before listening to the album in its entirety, I was nervous. It was my first serious foray into the emo genre, so I didn’t really know what awaited me.
But after the very last track, I realized that I actually loved it.
I thought “The End” was a great opener as it effectively set the mood, before abruptly transitioning to the adrenaline-pumping “Dead.”
“Mama” and “Sleep” scared the shit out of me, so I thought I should probably skip these songs when listening to the album at night.
“Cancer” remained a favorite, but it was soon rivaled by “Welcome to the Black Parade.” I loved the latter’s intro which, I believe, went well with the story it was trying to tell.
Of course, the whole thing about the dead father’s memory being able to “carry on” resonated with me.
My father might not have taken me to the city to see a marching band, but still, his memory will carry on.