I wrote 'The Other Side' after learning that an incredibly kind and talented person with whom I'd once been in love had passed.

While it had been a long time since we'd been in touch, learning that he'd died of an aggressive form of cancer at a relatively young age, hit hard.

Writing the song and especially singing it, helped me process the multi-layered grief I felt for the fact that he was gone, and much too soon, the old lost at the ending of the relationship and the special time we'd shared, as well as that distant chapter of my life.

 

About a year after I wrote the song, I recorded it as part of my Department of the West record. 

BY DEBORAH CROOKS