I'll Love You Forever

 

The story behind "Love You Forever" is probably not what you thought according to Baby Center.  I was reading some posts this morning and found this.  The book by Robert Munsch was one of my favorites for Kat and I to share at night.  I can remember crying while I sang the song.  Even today, though she is married and lives a long distance from me....I can still hear this simple tune in my head and come unglued.  What is the tune?  “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”  As I said earlier, this song reduce me to tears at the first words....but I have friends who do not like the song at all.  They say it is creepy.  I have stood in amazement after listening to them.  I have wondered....do they not even love their children.  What is wrong with these people.  Well....I see it as a touching account of a mother's unending love and they see it as the ultimate example of helicopter parenting gone bad.  Even the writer of the article falls into the second category.  He admits he has always subscribed to that latter category. It pained him to say it, because he also loved Mr. Munsch’s books. Mud Puddle, Mortimer, The Paperback Princess, Smelly Socks, Stephanie’s Ponytail, Too Much Stuff: There are well-worn copies of each of them on his daughters’ bookshelf. But while they own a copy of Love You Forever (I have one in English and Spanish myself) – who doesn’t? – Our writer has always found the story to be a little bit creepy.  So, have you not read this book??????  Let me do a quick summary for you.  The book begins with a mother rocking her newborn baby, singing that now-familiar song as he drifts off to sleep. From there the baby grows into a trouble-making toddler, a caked-in-dirt little boy, a sulky teenager and, eventually, a husband and father with a baby of his own. Through it all, every night, even after he’s moved into his own home, his mother sneaks into his bedroom, pulls him from bed and rocks him while she sings him their song.  Like I said earlier, several of my friends found the book creepy, so I went in search for an explanation.  I mean, I’ve read Love You Forever dozens of times over the years, but the day I learned the rest of  the story was actually the day Kruze and Kash were born.  I needed something to do with my time while we waited.....and so I typed "Love You Forever and this is what I found. It was originally written as a song for the author’s two stillborn babies.  I went to the bathroom and cried til I thought I would be sick.   Mr. Munsch writes on his web site:

“I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn’t even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn’t sing.  For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.  Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book.”

Thanks to that book, countless parents have sung that song to their own children, in different countries and different languages, in different tunes and styles. Here is how it sounds to Mr. Munsch:
I don't care how you take the book....and no I am not a helicopter parent.  I see my daughter seldom.  We talk several times a week.  When she is in Moldova we Skype.  It is a comfort song for me.  I will love her forever...and as long as I am living my baby she'll be.  Just saying.  Have a great day.