Summary

The author recounts the emotional significance of the song "Danny Boy," which their father often sang to them before bed and was later sung at his burial ceremony at the US Military Academy at West Point.

Abstract

The article is a poignant reflection on the role of the song "Danny Boy" in the author's family life and the emotional weight it carried during their father's burial at West Point. The father's deep singing voice, particularly when he sang this song, is fondly remembered as a source of comfort and safety for the author and their siblings. The song, an old ballad from 1913, became a family treasure, sung through generations. The author describes the day of the burial, with its perfect weather and the presence of family, as a fitting tribute to their father's life. The act of singing "Danny Boy" at the ceremony became a way for the author and their sisters to honor their father's memory and the comfort he provided through his music.

Opinions

The author views their father's singing voice, especially when singing "Danny Boy," as both comical and a source of awe and respect.
"Danny Boy" is considered a dear but sad song, suitable for funerals and deeply connected to the author's family history.
The author expresses gratitude for the fortunate weather on the day of the burial, suggesting that even the environment seemed to pay respect.
The presence of the West Point cadet, who showed the family around, provided a comforting connection to the past and the continuity of life at the academy.
The author acknowledges their own lack of singing prowess but emphasizes the importance of song in their family, highlighting the significance of being able to sing together at the burial.
The author reflects on the innocence of childhood, contrasting it with the gravity of the song's lyrics, which resonated more deeply as they grew older and understood their father's wartime experiences.
The act of singing "Danny Boy" at the burial is seen as a way to warm and sweeten their father's final resting place, fulfilling a promise of comfort and love that the song symbolized throughout their lives.

FINAL SONG

Danny Boy

Singing my dad to sleep

My dad had a deep voice when he sang, and sometimes even deeper when he forced it lower, and his face strained like a moaning bull. To me, it was part comical when he did this, part operatic, and partly a visage to be feared. I’m sure he didn’t realize his singing face had the same eyes and mouth as the face he used to reprimand us. Either way, I bet I behaved better during singalongs. Or maybe I didn’t, and thus the face.

Yet, when my dad sang to us before bed, scratching our backs gently and singing softly, there was only a kind face. Safety and calm lofted in the sleepy air about our small heads that rested on our pillows. More often than any other song, my dad sang “Danny Boy” to us through the years. This song, an old tune from long ago, grew up in our household alongside us, and we came to sing it later to our own children. It was one of our family’s treasures.

The other week my husband, kids, and I drove from our home in northern Virginia to West Point, New York where the US Military Academy sits on a sweeping view of the Hudson River. I suppose if this is where you’ll train to protect our massive country, and perhaps even give your life in the process, it’s right and proper to have such a majestic place to rest — which is what we did with our dad’s ashes recently — laid them to rest.

The extended family drove there from around the Eastern US, plus one flew in from California — a collection of generous souls whose presence and effort made my mom, siblings, and me extremely grateful.

A lovely day for it

The day was one of those elite days of the year when temps are decent, crisp sunlight shines like a diamond, and the sky is its prettiest. How we pulled such lucky weather out of the hat that day when all before was the sticky heat of summer, who’s to know? The weather gods were being kind as we listened to the priest say his words, the guns fire their respect into the air, and the butterflies flicker the place with bits of peppy life. If your fate was to bury someone that day, it sure was a lovely day to do it.

Around the campus, young cadets were marching in formation on the great lawns. Faculty and staff were going about daily business. Families were, one by one, filing into the cemetery to take up their sought-after appointment to honor their dead. The squirrels jumping around didn’t seem connected to this military world one bit nor its burials, and I liked that juxtaposition on such a day of finality. Life continues.

But life preceded this, too, which included time spent listening to my dad sing his songs. There was Johnny Cash and Elvis. There were church hymns and Christmas songs. And there was “Danny Boy”.

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountainside. The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling, It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.

It’s an old ballad written in 1913 by Frederic Weatherly, an English lawyer and prolific lyricist. It’s a dear but sad song and was popular in the funeral scene. Is it still today? I couldn’t say, but it’s what my mom asked my sisters and me to sing after the military academy had finished its ceremony. We would put our father down fittingly for his long sleep as he’d done for us so many times.

Song was important

I learned that my sisters and I were singing the song at the burial ceremony on the drive up to New York. While my husband and kids discussed some such thing in the car, I practiced the song quietly under my breath while I drove. I hadn’t sung in a long time, and I’m hardly a singer to begin with — maybe you’d say not at all if you heard me. But all of us in my family can hold a tune, thankfully, as there were untold rides in the car growing up with all of us wailing a tune at the top of our lungs, mostly (marginally?) on key.

Song was important to my dad.

My youngest son had a high school friend who is a fourth-year cadet at West Point. This kind fellow met up with us after the ceremony and showed us some of the grounds, answered any possible questions we had about the academy, livened our moods, and gave us a peek at what it might have been like when my dad was there back in the early 1960s — or at least how different it is to go to school at a military academy versus anywhere else.

My memories of Dad singing “Danny Boy” reaches back to Indianapolis where we lived after my dad returned from Vietnam and served in the Army reserves. My sister and I slept in a set of twin beds in a bedroom with a window that looked out toward Gina’s house, the girl next door who was our age and picked her nose a lot, which I still remember vividly.

Serious things

Life then was a romping childhood — a little of this and that, with my sister, with Gina, twirling batons, playing in the yard. By nightfall, it became a winding down, and then going to bed, which for active girls was a process. Danny Boy helped to that end.

I recall not really understanding the lyrics, but I understood it was somber and sad and about love. I understood it was about serious things I hadn’t yet seen, though the man singing it at our bedsides had recently seen quite a bit of that seriousness. It affected him greatly though we wouldn’t know this until he shared his stories decades later. What a lot to carry around for a guy still in his twenties.

At the burial ceremony, it was finally our turn to sing. My two sisters and I stepped up to the small square vault where my dad’s ashes would now reside. There was a big bouquet of flowers at our feet that said “Class of 1964”. We began. My sisters set a brisk but reasonable pace through the song, and before I knew it, it was coming to its end. Then there was that one set of lines.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be

The tears caught in my throat. This line always seemed like such an anomaly when I heard it as a child. A grave seemed so far away to my young mind, because it was. That day at West Point, it couldn’t have been any closer. And I hope for my dad it couldn’t have been warmer or sweeter as his family stood there to gently coax him off to sleep.

Good night, Dad. Sleep well.

Thank you, Kit Desjacques, for helping to clean up this story. I appreciate it!