The saddest song I know

It's not because of the lyrics, or because the band is one of the most chronically underappreciated acts out there. It's not even because this song has been stolen and Bobby McFerrinized into that insipid "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz.

It's because, always and forever, I will associate this song - which I first heard the day before yesterday - with a beautiful young girl who died far, far too soon.

Modest Mouse, "Bankrupt on Selling", from the album The Lonesome Crowded West.

Why did she die? I don't know. I know so much from my almost-obsessive detective work, but I don't know that. I suspect I know who does. I imagine myself meeting them someday, and grabbing them by the shoulders, and shouting WHY DID SHE DIE? WHY DID YOU LET HER DIE???

And I have no right. None. Not even to know the things I already know.

So I sit with my speculations. I'd like to do something constructive with them - turn them into a warning to others who may be following along the same path, based entirely on what I speculate happened. I am almost certainly wrong, in the specifics and even in the broad outline. But if what I write can help keep someone else alive who might otherwise become dead, dead like her, then it will have been worth it.