I've been fascinated by death since I was a kid. If one of my thrift-store Ken dolls got smashed while I played with it in a construction site, his face beyond recognition and a leg broken off, I would stage a mock burial for it, with a funeral and everything. Then I'd wonder about where we went after we died. I was, by my own admission, a somewhat morbid little kid. (In hindsight, I was very likely also morbidly depressed, but diagnosing that sort of thing in seven-year-olds was not a popular stance for medical professionals to take in 1970, and so I would go undiagnosed for decades. That, as they say, is life.)
Dead animals in the road horrified me for years. A dead squirrel flattened on the yellow stripe was immediate, real, bloody and bird-pecked. Disgusting.
But stories of dead people didn't freak me out that way. They made me wonder: where do we go when we die? What will we look and feel like? Is there a heaven? And is it up? Or somewhere, something else?
The ancient Greeks (or the Romans? I can't remember now) believed that when a person died, they'd go to the Great Wherever and find themselves inhabiting a heavenly version of themselves aged thirty, no matter what their age at death. Learning this at age ten, I wasn't sure I wanted to skip the experiences of the twenty years in between if I died then and there. It seemed like being cheated somehow.
Judaism held out no additional help or comfort, not at first, and not for a long time.
When I was seven, my grandfather died. My grandmother followed a couple years after. I wasn't permitted to attend either of their funerals by my parents, because that was the prevailing wisdom of the time. So when my pet parakeet died around the same time as my grandfather, the best I could do was ask my father to help me conduct a burial service for Tweety in our backyard. Which he did with all the solemnity and love a father could muster for such an occasion. I took Tweety's death seriously, so my father did too.
It did nothing to answer my questions about what would happen to me, though.
Death is the thing you can't come back and tell the others about.
And so we make stuff up, in a feeble effort to wrap our limited brains around a concept of a No-thing that's possibly bigger than the Everything we experience as "life" here on earth.
But if No-thing isn't "nothing," if it is instead a thing that can't be explained by our limited/limiting language, then maybe it isn't so fearsome as all that.
I remember the first time I realized all the way down into my bones that I was mortal, and would die someday. I was in my early twenties. The realization rocked me in a way beyond words, and that knowledge has stayed with me ever since.
And so, when I began writing songs in my thirties, I knew back then that one day I'd have to write a song all about death, from the perspective of someone who was still living. Because, being depressed, I was -- and still am, periodically -- a somewhat morbid grownup. I didn't know how I'd write this song, or what I'd say. I trusted that at some point, my life would give me the raw material I needed, and I filed the notion away for future reference.
And then, two years ago, I began volunteering as a Shomer, one who guards the met, or dead body, during the time between preparation and burial, for our local Jewish burial society.
I was not prepared for what I experienced the first time I stepped up to take a turn sitting with the closed casket (Judaism forbids open casket funerals) for an hour and a half. It was beyond description, leaving me humbled and oddly reassured. The man in the casket couldn't tell me where he was going, or if there was anything of him, his Self, left, or even what it was like to have died. But his presence inside the sealed casket gave me a quiet sense of calm I still can't explain. At some point, it will be my turn to be gently and lovingly laid somewhere, surrounded by caring people until it was time for my body to go where it's supposed to. (I'm purposefully vague about this last point because I'm exploring my options.)
In the end, Judaism gave me the reassurance I needed, and the raw material that informed this song.
Since I don't know if I will be able to raise the resources needed for a professional studio recording anytime soon -- money's tight all over in the New Economy -- I've decided to release a very rough, homemade version here. I am grateful to Portland's liberal Chevra Kadisha for allowing me to be of use and learn at the same time. If I can't give back, perhaps I can give something forward to someone down the road.
The Watchman’s Chair
V:
The room is still, so still that everything out there
Becomes nothing in here
Before me is a pine box, unpainted, unadorned
But for a little wooden star they glued on top
The star floats above the man inside the box
Sealed off from everything
Become nothing, lying oh so still
Too still for sleep
And for this hour I will keep caring watch
Over the body of the man who is no more
CH:
Starlight doesn’t shine in here
I sit beside the casket
And it’s strange to feel no fear
I know that it will be my turn one day
And though I’ll no longer know enough to care, I hope that someone else will take my place
And take their turn in the watchman’s chair
V:
Some may place a candle at their loved one’s head and feet
To light up the way to heaven
The custom here is different, we take turns taking care
Of our dearly beloved one
Each one of us is the candle
Lighting the heart-shaped hole poked in a world
That’s fast asleep
And for this hour I will keep caring watch
Over the body of the one who is no more
— CH --
V:
My days stretch out all blurry, behind me and before me
A million moments rush by in a whirl
When I guard this simple box I’m reminded once again
We’re each a tiny speck in the history of the world
A hundred years from now, who’ll know I was here?
Will it matter that I mattered once
To someone else who’s just as gone
Too still for sleep
And for this hour who will keep caring watch
Over the body of the one I was…
— CH --
Copyright 4-22-2019 Beth Hamon