When You’re 88 and it’s Christmas

— Brian W. Flynn

Winter has come to Upstate New York, All the streets are covered with snow,
Frost has formed on the glass in the windows, Better go down and turn up the stove.
But it’s hard to find a good reason, to keep getting up every day,
When you’re 88 and it’s Christmas, Summer seems so far away.

The kids for the schoolhouse came and broke out my windows,
And one of them stole all my wood.
You can’t even pay one to shovel the walk, I’d do it myself if I could.
But it’s hard to find a good reason to keep getting up every day, When you’re 88 and it’s Christmas, You run out of new things to say.

The urban renewal has torn down the houses where all of my friends used to live,
And they put up a high-rise, that blocks out the sunshine,
For people who take but don’t give.
And there used to be so many reasons, to keep getting up every day,
When you’re 88 and it’s Christmas, Summer seems so far away.

It’s been 10 years now since my wife’s been gone, it’s been me and the cat since then,
The stairs they keep getting harder to climb, somedays it seems like they’ll never end.
But I always find one more reason, to keep getting up every day,
If I can only make it past Christmas, then summer can’t be far away.