I'll Fly Away

On The Wind Beneath Your Wings & Funeral Songs

I stepped out my front door to go get some fresh air and the supreme stillness of a tiny bird just standing on the armchair on my porch, staring straight ahead brought me to a halt. I could feel trauma emanating from its tiny motionless frame. It was an insanely windy day and I theorised that the wind had just blown the birdie straight into the window behind him and he was stunned. We found a cardboard box, punched air holes in and cut a window into it, ingeniously covered with a clear manila folder so we could keep an eye on him, gathered some grass for the floor and popped the bird inside with some hemp seed and water to recover on our couch.

I went for my walk/run thing and came home and checked on him (it may well have been a female bird, but it had boyish vibes so I went with it) and thought I detected a slight head movement. Maybe he was going to get better. I went off to cook dinner. Somewhere between chopping the onions and my sauce being ready the little bird keeled over and died. The next morning we dug a hole in the back yard, played ‘I’ll Fly Away’ and sprinkled some dirt over his sweet little frame. It proved itself to be the perfect funeral song.

Upon researching for a secret-soon-to-be-revealed-project I’m brewing, I discovered that ‘Wing Beneath My Wings’ is one of the most popular funeral songs ever, alongside Tina’s ‘Simply The Best’ and Celine’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. ‘Yesterday’ also gets a lot of traction. Here’s an explanation I found:

"Yesterday" is a Beatles classic, and it's central message make it a very powerful song to be played during a funeral ceremony. Reflective by it's very nature, it's the ultimate song for reaching into the past and pulling out feelings we don't want to let go of.

I think having at least one perfect funeral song picked out for yourself and stated clearly to your friends and family at any opportune moment is the least we can do for ourselves. Perhaps an entire playlist is a good idea. Here’s a few of my top picks:

I found this in the comments of a different version: ‘I played this at my funeral. It was cool. Everybody started to dance’. Good testimonial. Velvet Underground have a lot of great funeral songs in their catalogue. I like this one too:

Or if you really want to leave ‘em weeping in the aisles, this is the best. I’ll have this one please:

Life and death are so ordinary until they happen inside your own personal sphere and the whole weight of it shape shifts.

One morning not that long ago I was driving the kids to school, waiting to turn right at the roundabout at the end of my street. As I accelerated towards it, after looking left, looking right, a boy ran straight into the side of our car and crumpled to the street. By the time I leapt out of the car and arrived at his side, he was upright and apologising profusely and assuring me he was fine. I was panicked and in shock and asking him over and over if he was ok. A man came jogging up who said he knew the boy, was his neighbour and he’d seen the whole thing. He checked him out, said the boy was fine, it wasn’t my fault, and I should drive on. The boy kept saying he was fine. A kindly sensible seeming woman exited the car behind mine and took complete charge of the situation, checking the boy properly, noting my state and the twenty cars piling up behind us and directed me to drive on. I offered my name and number, everyone assured me there was no need. There didn’t seem to be anymore to do so I obeyed. My kids were shaken too, and we drove achingly slowly and cautiously on towards school. None of us spoke, and we didn’t fight over what song to play over the car speakers. I panicked internally as I approached every traffic light and pedestrian crossing. At one point we drove past the boy, he’d overtaken us walking while we were in a slow traffic patch and was nearly at his school. He looked fine. The kids bade me very quiet goodbyes as I dropped them at their respective schools. I drove on towards home when I suddenly realised I couldn’t control my breathing and silent tears were streaming from my eyes making it hard to see. I pulled over and cried it out. I’m not much of a cryer, I don’t do it a lot (though getting choked up is a whole different story) and the heaving sobs shocked me almost as much as what happened; the pretty much non-event minor bump that we all understood could just as easily have been the moment that I killed a child and that somebody lost their child. The momentous moment that wasn’t. The invisible line between life and death had shimmered between us all for a moment, just long enough for us all to remember how thin that veil between worlds is. A couple of months later I drove past him again on our street, and both of our heads turned, we caught each other’s eye and nodded, half-smiled, in some kind of recognition that something had once passed between us. Then we turned away and carried on with our business. He was such a lovely looking kid, his age somewhere between my own boys, probably around 12, and all I could think about the rest of the day was how much his parents surely adored him, how sweet and easygoing he seemed, how he probably hadn’t mentioned the incident, no doubt feeling foolish for having run straight into a car without looking, and how they would never know how close they came to losing him. 

I remembered walking straight into a car the same way in LA, somewhat ironically crossing the road in front of The Hollywood Forever cemetery - possibly my favourite place in LA - looking down at my phone like a teenager, at the pictures I’d just taken of peacocks wandering round the cemetery. The driver hurled a barrage of abuse at me for being an #$%*!! idiot and I fought the urge to yell back that I knew I was and hot tears pricked my eyeballs and I blushed with the shame of stupidity. 

Then I started thinking about what a great story song it would make. Opening line: ‘The last photograph she ever took, was of a gravestone…’ Stay tuned for that one, it’s gonna be a killer. I’m gonna have to resurrect George Jones to sing it.

‘The last photograph she ever took..’ was a pretty bad/ordinary peacock shot at Hollywood Forever

Send me your favourite funeral songs!