A Four-Song Funeral March for the Possum Who Reminded Me to Keep Spinning

Without music, we would be a little more lost than we are

The possum’s leg was mangled. Broken or dislocated, it dragged along the timber boards like a suitcase without wheels. Tufts of fur were strewn across the deck and there was an unmistakable look of fear in the possum's eyes. I held back my dog, straining against my arms, and wondered.

What music would be appropriate for a possum funeral?

The possum didn’t have a name. I first saw her a couple of years back carrying a baby on her back as she scurried along the power line outside my house.

Recently, up with a screaming baby at 4 am, I would hear the possum and her family scrabbling across the roof. Their noises reminded me that a world existed outside the fishbowl of sleeplessness and exhaustion in which it sometimes felt like I was drowning.

So I built her a house of her own in the murraya bush out front, sheltered from the crows who love to peck their eyes and out of reach of my dog.

Or so I thought.

My dog Scooby was a rescue. He was found on the streets and never claimed by his owner. Amongst the madness of the pound, he exuded calmness and serenity, and despite the scars on his back legs hinting at trauma I would never understand, I couldn’t wait to take him home.

If there was an Oscar for dogs, he’d win a paw-full, and then probably pull a Will Smith and maul the presenter for pissing on his fencepost. Within days of coming home, he was barking, humping, and escaping.

Every ‘-ing’ but listening.

To my surprise, this time Scooby listened and released the possum when I yelled at him. After the shock wore off, the possum realised it still had three working limbs and would make the most of them. It dashed inside my house and clambered up the chimney.

As I perched on top of a chair and reached up to grab it, the possum made another valiant leap for freedom and thudded against the living room floorboards. After chasing the surprisingly still-nimble possum for several minutes, I grabbed it with a towel and placed it in a massive cardboard box from the child car seat we had recently bought.

The possum and I made the trip to the animal hospital in silence. I knew already the possum was doomed. No vet was going to waste precious time and resources on a possum needing extensive rehab, not when French bulldog owners are lining up to shell out ten grand a pop for a hip replacement or butt implant.

I thought about playing some music. I like listening to music when I drive. I wondered if possums were the same. Perhaps something laid back, with nature vibes. Jack Johnson or Xavier Rudd. They are family-oriented creatures, so maybe the Jackson 5? Beach boys?

What would you want to listen to when you know you’re going to die?

In the end, I chose silence. I couldn’t speak for the possum and to torture its last moments with the arrogance of my tastes felt wrong.

The animal hospital was quieter than most emergency departments at ten pm on a Friday night. No OD’s, no PAFOs (pissed and fell overs), although the chocolate lab in the corner was licking his genitals vociferously. I placed the ridiculously oversized box on the reception desk. The eyes of the woman taking admissions bulged.

“It's just a possum,” I said reassuringly.

I half expected the double doors to swing open and vets and nurses to come pouring out with stethoscopes and defibrillators at the ready. But this wasn’t Grey’s Anatomy. It wasn’t even Bondi Vet. Instead, I had to spend five minutes filling out a form as long as my tax return.

When someone eventually came for the possum — still yet to make a peep — I asked if they would call and let me know what happened.

“We get a lot of these,” she said, apologising with a shrug of her shoulders.

Music has been a big part of my life. It started with the albums my dad played from his youth he had a hard time letting go of. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and The Cure. I listened to Top40 as a teenager, until a baking philosopher introduced me to Stoner rock and 90’s Grunge. I grew my hair out and deafened myself to Kyuss, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Tumbleweed. At times I’ve dabbled in metal, hip-hop, and the blues.

Throughout it all, my ears have always been drawn to the melancholic. Pain cuts through everything. Give me a howl, a shriek, a moan over a Do Do and Whoa Oh any day. When I feel down, I don’t want to listen to cheerful music. It won’t make me feel better. If anything I’ll feel worse.

One thing I’ve learnt in the eternal quest for happiness is that if you were happy all the time you never would be.

I have a playlist on my phone called Chillaa. It’s my sad music mix. It felt appropriate. As I began the car ride home through the empty streets, with the dark night pressing down on me from above, I hit shuffle.

The first song to play was ‘My Mind’ by Yebba.

This song has a desperate rage. It stares a looming grief in the face and refuses to back down.

You can’t even look me dead in the eyes Her love is strong, she got you hypnotised You say you love me but I know it’s a lie When I work so hard to keep you satisfied

I was still angry at my dog. It was an irrational anger, I knew. Dogs are predators. They hunt to survive and some have an instinct that will never be domesticated.

The possum would die. My dog would never change. This was nature, and as much as we humans have attempted to subvert it, failure to accept the inevitable only leads to frustration.

My mind, my mind, my mind I’m ‘bout to lose my My mind, my mind, my mind I’m ‘bout to lose my Woah-oh How could you? How could you do Do this to me? Yeah

The next song to play was Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s ‘Hurt.’

This song has made me cry more times than I can remember. Recorded less than a year before his death, Johnny Cash’s health and voice are on the verge of breaking.

I hurt myself today To see if I still feel I focus on the pain The only thing that’s real

The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting Try to kill it all away But I remember everything

Normally, I would be lost in the bleakness. I’d wallow in my own regrets and make no effort to head to shore. Part of me blamed myself for the possum’s death. I should have brought Scooby inside earlier. I could have kept him on the deck rather than let him run back and forth amongst the gloom, stalking the possum’s nightly commute.

But at this point, I began to feel something I have experienced only fleetingly in my life. I won’t label it, because any label would sound wanky and trivialise its significance.

These songs, my thoughts, the possum, and the family left behind — they were all part of something much bigger. The stitching together of these songs was unravelling the patterns of the universe.

I listened.

If I could start again A million miles away I would keep myself I would find a way

I was halfway home by now, traveling along a lonely stretch of highway flanked by towering gums and bottlebrushes. I waited to see who would emerge next.

In the past, I had heard in ‘Miracle Love’ the panic of a failing relationship. The realisation of the damage of taking someone else for granted. But I realised then that this song was more than that. Corby captures the friction that comes when we stray too far away from the things that glue us all together.

And we were grown on the same round little blue dot Although the answers will take their time and the spinning won’t stop So could it be that the nightmare is upon us And heavy hearts can’t decide when they’ve had enough So they’re burning out cold?

There are points in our lives when everything just feels right. Everything clicks, and the loneliness and existential dilemmas fade into the background.

For some, these periods may last a while, for others, it’s only evanescent. The rise and fall of the piano hook in this song reminded me these times will come back round again, sure as the sun kisses the east each morning.

As long as we keep spinning.

We got carried away All the love that I was blind to And I made my mistakes And I laid them all beside you We got carried away So much love that I was blind to And I made my mistakes And you put them all behind you Can we bring back that miracle love? Can we bring back that miracle love?

The sadness I felt at the possum’s likely death, my misplaced anger towards my dog, and the hyper-critical guilt that rises up in times of stress, all began to fade. As they did, another piano riff rose from the silence.

I first discovered Ludovico Einaudi’s music through the movie The Intouchables. His signature song in the movie, “Fly,” is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard.

Ludovico’s music has the ability to make me feel tiny, not by diminishing me, but by magnifying the sheer vastness of the universe around us. What feels like a lifetime for us, is in another reality a mere blink of an eye. A time-lapse.

I arrived home in a state of peace. Perhaps it was only the tenuous nature of my connection to the possum which allowed this. Would I have felt the same if it was my dog who died instead? Or a person I know?

I doubt it, not straight away at least. Time helps.

When I remember the possum, I will remember death is part of life. Grief and pain are part of life. So is joy. If you are stuck in the darkness and can’t yet see the dawn, keep hope.

Keep spinning.

A big thank you to kasey sparks for her editing skills and encouragement.