Let's Talk about Death (over Dinner) by Michael Hebb

Author:Michael Hebb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

What song would you want played at your funeral? Who would sing it?

Angel and I were eating a rushed breakfast before a morning meeting. We’d picked a little diner in West Seattle that happened to be half record store, half greasy spoon. David Bowie’s song “Sound and Vision” played on the speakers overhead, and as I checked my Facebook feed, a post stopped me cold: “It is as if the brightest light in the universe has burnt out. We will miss you starman.” I felt a resounding “no” echo through my entire body. David Bowie was dead. “Sound and Vision” was playing as a lament.

I had never before been affected by the death of a musician or actor. I’d never judged this response in people, but until January 10, 2016, I had no way of understanding it. I had no way of knowing that Bowie’s death would impact me so powerfully. Tears streamed down my face. Angel was immediately alarmed and tender, and I felt like I might start bawling like a child. It is not even that I am the biggest Bowie fan, but in looking back on this experience and my sense of grief and loss around his death, I realize that his existence—his incredibly bold, unwavering commitment to expand our consciousness, to push at the edges of convention or flat-out break them—made me feel safe in this world. In countless ways Bowie had given me and so many of us permission to explore our own edges. A world without him felt immediately less.

Bowie shows us that music touches a part of us that isn’t necessarily logical, that goes where words can’t and instead lands in the realm of feeling—this is why music and grief are so entwined. It is hard to imagine a funeral or a memorial without music.

I consider “What song would you want played at your funeral? Who would sing it?” as an icebreaker prompt, a safe question. It’s a question you can ask your parents, your spouse, or grandparents without tripping the full-scale alarm that you are asking them to consider their own mortality. We live during the era of the playlist, and so it can act as a conversation starter that engages in an unthreatening way. I use it when I’ve gathered a bunch of strangers to talk about death, and though there is usually laughter and some wistfulness in the answers, you might be surprised how quickly this question can move into the depths.

I’m always struck by the diversity of the responses: one person wants Louis Armstrong back from the dead to remind us “What a Wonderful World” we live in, another Merle Haggard, another wants Tupac in holograph-form breaking down “Only God Can Judge Me,” and many of the answers are personal, not grand—a sister or best friend singing “Over the Rainbow.”

Torrie Fields, a palliative-care advocate, answered this question like she had been rehearsing it for decades, and it turns out she has. “My mom would sing Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna,’” she said.

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