Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

In Watchmen Simon & Garfunkel's song "The Sound of Silence" plays over the scene of the Comedian's funeral.

It plays while the camera lingers on a cemetery angel, on rain falling on the sidewalks, on an unmasked Rorschach going by with his sign. THE END IS NIGH. Soldiers bear the coffin, wrapped in a 51-starred alternate universe American flag. You, the viewer, watch the cast members arrive one by one, watch the wind blow the Christian priest's robes around, watch the gathering grow with everyone dressed in black.

It's a soothing song, really. The lyrics go,

"Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains within the sound of silence. "In restless dreams I walked alone Narrpw streets of cobblestone 'Neath the halo of a street lamp I turn my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed By a flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence.

"And in the naked light I saw Ten thousand people, maybe more People talking without speaking People hearing without listening People writing songs that voices never share ...:"

At this point Dr. Manhatten zaps Laurie to her mother's home and the song ends abruptly, but the point stays. The impression stays.

This has been a year of loss. My great-uncle died. I barely knew him.

One of our cats died. Hours before, he had woken me up with his meowing, the usual, that cat meowed at everything. I fell back asleep. When I woke up, the cat had died and been taken away.

Eight guinea pigs died, some stillborn, some gasping and choking and spitting up froth on their way to the animal hospital while I hoped for some sort of miracle. The vet has explained to me time and time again that they've been overbred over the years, that the ones sold as pets in the US are prone to weak hearts and lungs, that small creatures can be fine one moment and dying the next.

Death has started following me around. He sits in the booth with me while I have breakfast with my grandfather, an elderly man who will soon die. He stands behind me when I wake up and go to check the driveway to find that my mother has left for work, driving on streets that take hundreds of lives each year. He waits by the guinea pigs' cage when one of them sneezes in the night and I get out of bed to check on them, just in case. In my dreams people vanish, people die and small creatures are crushed and poisoned. I've had a long string of nightmares.

I don't need to tell you about human fragility and fear. You already know.

I wish that it would rain more. April showers and everything. The yellow-and-white daylight hurts my eyes. Overcast skies are gentler, and I want the world to be gentle with me right now.

#death #comics