Songfacts®:

• By this time, Eddie Vedder had two kids with his girlfriend, Jill McCormick, whom he married the following year. This ballad reflects the anguish Vedder felt when he was so often away from his family:
  
  It pains to leave you here
  With the kids on your own
  
  It's one of the personal songs written by the Pearl Jam frontman.
• Vedder is the only band member on this track. It's just his voice and acoustic guitar backed by strings and horns arranged by Eddie Horst.
  
  Vedder recalled to Billboard magazine:" It became kind of emotional when we laid the strings down. I was really moved by this song when I was a kid called "Street in the City" off Rough Mix by Pete Townshend. It was such a powerful juxtaposition of strings with just acoustic guitar. His was a full-on orchestral arrangement that I believe his father-in-law did. It sounded like one guy playing with an orchestra behind him. It was a real powerful thing. To get a chance to explore a little bit of that sound... it's really pretty subtle, but it turned into something very cinematic."
• Vedder wrote this song himself and played it live on his 2008 solo tour before recording it for Pearl Jam's 2009 Backspacer album.
• Fittingly, this is the last song on the album. It ends with a striking message:
  
  My dear, the end comes near
  I'm here
  But not much longer
  
  "I'll admit that even I felt some impact myself listening to it back the first time, and not even really knowing where it came from," Vedder said in Pearl Jam's compilation Twenty.
• Vedder told the Toronto Globe and Mail that part of this aching love song was inspired by a phone message. He explained: "I got a phone call from a friend, from Spain. I couldn't pick up the phone because I was recording the guitar part. I had written half the song's lyrics. When I checked his message, he had said something that enabled me to write the second verse, and in 20 minutes, it was done. That's how it happened on this record. It was writing the quick ones – there was no room for the other stuff. We'll see how long approaching it like this goes. But it's the right way for us to do it right now."
• Guitarist Stone Gossard told Billboard that he thinks this song is going to stand out as one of Vedder's greatest songs ever. He explained: "To have a song that is so simple in terms of the vocal melody and delivery... for the words to have that much impact and to flow without a complex rhyme strategy - the words rhyme, but that's the last thing you think about - I just think it is a stunning example of Eddie on his own. There are some strings and horns, but that song, he just came in and played us a demo he'd recorded the night before on his home 4-track. It's just ridiculously good. He just about breaks his voice. It's so vulnerable."