After almost a decade on the air, Stephen Colbert brought The Colbert Report to a close Thursday night. For the final show, he brought back many familiar segments, including “The Wørd” and an abbreviated edition of “Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A” in which Colbert finally managed to overcome death.



But the closing credits contained something different. Rather than the usual outro music, the show played “Holland, 1945” by the band Neutral Milk Hotel. Why that song? As Maureen Dowd noted in an article about Colbert in the New York Times in April, Colbert “had 10 older siblings” as a child, but his family was struck by tragedy. “[H]is father and the two brothers closest to him in age died in a plane crash when he was 10.”

Colbert told Dowd he loved the “strange, sad poetry” of “Holland, 1945,” and he sent her the lyrics, which contain these words:

But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

And here’s where your mother sleeps

And here is the room where your brothers were born

Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore.