Home to you

I rode with him through a million miles,

Past roadhouses, dust and rain,

Watched the sunrise through the windscreen,

Then watched it disappear again.

There was a photo on the sunvisor,

His wife and two boys smiling through,

And every time the road got lonely,

He’d say, “I’m heading home to you.”

He wrote me down one quiet night,

Parked beneath a roadhouse light,

Folded me behind that photograph,

And tucked me out of sight.

Said, “Hope these words are never needed,”

Then slid me in behind that view—

A few last lines for those he loved,

If he never made it through.

If I don’t make it through the gate,

If one night I’m running late,

Tell my boys their old man loved ’em,

More than I ever knew how to say.

Tell their mum she was my whole world,

Every bloody mile was for you,

And if that road should end before I get there,

I was heading home to you.

I stayed hidden there for years,

Through summer heat and winter rain,

Through missed birthdays, dawn deliveries,

And long runs home again.

I heard him talk about the little things,

The stuff that pulled him through—

Footy boots and porch lights,

And getting home to you.

Then one wet night the radio went quiet,

Blue lights danced across the rain,

Diesel running down the blacktop,

Steel twisted round the lane.

A copper reached up to the sunvisor,

Pulled that photograph loose—

And there I was behind their smiling faces,

With the words he hoped they’d never use.

If I don’t make it through the gate,

If one night I’m running late,

Tell my boys their old man loved ’em,

More than I ever knew how to say.

Tell their mum she was my whole world,

Every bloody mile was for you,

And if that road should end before I get there,

I was heading home to you.

She opened me at the kitchen table,

With both boys sitting close,

And read the words he’d left behind,

The ones that hurt the most.

Final Chorus

Don’t remember twisted steel,

Or the night I didn’t get through,

Remember all the times I made it home,

’Cause home was always you.

Tell my boys to love their mother,

Like they watched their old man do,

And when they ask where Dad was going—

I was heading home to you.

Now I sit beside that photograph,

Still folded like I used to do,

And every night she reads my final line—

“I was heading home to you.”