There Was

Sometimes the end of a relationship is not marked by an argument, a signed paper, or a slammed door. Sometimes it arrives in a phone call. There Was grew from one of the most painful nights of my life and the last truly meaningful conversation I had with my former wife, Susan. It was early winter in 2018, shortly after we had separated following nineteen years of marriage. Susan had moved with the children to Waterford, New York, while I was living alone in a small studio apartment in Albany. One night, my phone rang. Susan was crying. She had slipped badly on the ice outside her apartment and suffered a serious leg injury. She had not yet called 911. She called me. I contacted emergency services, gave them the information they needed, called her back, and stayed connected with her as I rushed north from Albany toward Waterford. By the time I arrived, the ambulance was already pulling away for Samaritan Hospital in Troy. I followed. At the hospital, I was not allowed into her room. After that night, communication between us essentially disappeared. What stayed with me was the contradiction of that night: in a moment of fear and vulnerability, I was still the person she called. I came when she needed me. And yet I understood that I no longer had a place in her life. That realization became There Was. The song is not an accusation, and it is not an attempt to reopen an old wound. It is one person's memory of the moment when the heart finally understood what the mind had been struggling to accept. There was a call. There was a life we had built. There was pain. There was love. And eventually, there was healing. Today I can return to that night without living inside it. The grief became memory, the memory became music, and the music became part of the larger story I am preserving through The Liddle Did I Know Life Project. Originally written in 2023 as The Phone, the song later evolved into There Was, a title drawn from the repeated language at the heart of the original lyric. Song: There Was | Writer and arranger: David A. Liddle | Style: Reflective cinematic folk rock | Key: E minor | Time: 4/4 | Studio tempo: approximately 83 BPM | Recorded at Dáithi Brúm Studio © 2023 David A. Liddle | ℗ 2026 Dáithi Brúm Studio LDiK | Legacy Through Purpose, People and Song #ThereWas #DavidLiddle #DaithiBrum #LiddleDidIKnow #LDiK #OriginalMusic #SingerSongwriter #FolkRock #StorytellingThroughMusic #HealingThroughMusic #ClubOrpheus