Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Back when I was a girl, it meant something to be a girl. Namely, that you couldn’t join the Boy Scouts under any circumstance, you took Home Economics instead of shop, and that your acceptable instruments in band were flute, clarinet and saxophone (sax only for the rebellious). I was underwhelmed by this definition of girl, and picked up trumpet with a cussed determination which served me in good stead. I opted to take shop instead of home ec, making me the lone girl in a class of 26 boys (I am old, but not older than Title 9). Alas, I never cracked the Boy Scouts. But I came from a family for whom Scouting was a deep part of our identity. My grandparents ran a Scout camp in Washington State. My father and his three brothers (what can I say – my grandma also liked boy stuff better than girl stuff) were all Eagle Scouts. My godfather was such a foundational member of the Order of the Arrow that his license plate was “BSA OA”. And my undimmed passion for nature and survival and camping meant that I was as close to a Boy Scout as I could get. I was even given a Boy Scout axe when I was 13. This was less exciting than it could be because I was expected to USE said axe to help split the several cords of woods my family used to heat our house of a winter. But still, there was a deep satisfaction in the boy-sized blue-painted single-bitted axe with the gold embossing.
So my adventures into trumpet involved bugle calls very early on. Reveille is fun to play, especially when you’re the first one up and the grownups permit you to be deeply irritating. Charge is also fun. Many bugle calls are more or less picked up by ear. But I had an ancient leather-bound manual, dramatically stained, that I think may have belonged to some ancestor of mine – a great grandfather of some ilk. As I recall, it was a 1918 Army Manual (although searches for it online claim that no such thing exists, so who knows – maybe this one?). And it had a whole section of bugle calls. Not just the three or four we all know, but mess and fix bayonets and a whole host of others. But of course most iconic was taps. Twenty four notes that look very complicated when written, with dots and emphases and fermatas. In the deep romanticism of my youth I played it mournfully in the dark of the cold church where I usually practiced. (My father also required me to learn Last Post, which I managed by dint of a battered third trumpet booklet bought in a used book store in Edmonton Canada. Ah, the days before the internet were hard folks. I was never quite confident whether that last note was meant to be unresolved or whether it was a chord and I was playing the third trumpet part.)
In high school, I contracted with the local funeral homes to play taps for veterans funerals – which only happened a few times. Memorably I played for several of my classmates as they met grievously early ends. I’ve played for the beloved veterans and relatives in my own family who have died: my grandfathers, my father-in-law, my godfather. It’s hard to play through your own grief, but the 24 notes are so familiar and almost instinctive that I have never yet failed.
For a long time, I volunteered with an organization that provides live buglers for veteran funerals. The color guards almost never have a live bugler anymore. (They have an MP3 player that looks like a bugle, which horrifies my heart for some reasons. In that role, I attended dozens of internments. It is a fascinating thing, to be part of the funeral apparatus. The time at the graveside is always approximate, and you end up waiting with the gravediggers and the color guards. The gravediggers were fascinating, with dirty boots, doing a job they did every single day. Some of them spoke about the inhabitants in the graves as you would about friends. The color guards were a real mixed bag. The Marines were always so buttoned down and proud (and uptight) and rarely spoke much to me. The Coast Guard usually was quite chatty. My favorite was the Navy because they were covered by the crew of the USS Constitution in their antique uniforms. You could almost tell which branch of the service by what vehicle they drove in. (Hint: Marines drive truck. Coast Guard drive sedans.) I played in funerals from an active duty death where I was carefully vetted and the brass were lined up in gleaming rows in the snow in Lindenwood to modest internments with just a few folks. I watched new color guards practice the folding over and over before the family arrived (and I have seen funerals where they had to fold the flag more than once). I’ve seen Catholic internments aplenty where the priest spoke the words without hearing them. I was privileged to join the family for a Chinese American veteran at Mt. Auburn, which was a very distinct funeral experience. Everyone turned their backs as the coffin was winched down, and they insisted I leave with a red envelope with $20 to avoid bad luck. I never accept payment for playing taps, but I kept that one. I learned to park where I wouldn’t be blocked in, to stand in a place where I could be seen but not blast the mourners, and exactly what invisible signal meant it was my turn. Almost without fail, a family that has held it together up to that point begin their weeping when I began my playing. It was an honor and a privilege and I miss it and I should really try to find a way to perform that service again.
This all comes to mind because I was recently enticed to join in Stoneham’s “Field of Honor” for the daily playing of taps at 5 pm, and I got to play today. (Full story here: look ma, I’m on TV!) I got to speak to some of the veterans afterwards, and it reminded me of how much does still unite us. We can come together and consider the flags that mark those who have made sacrifices: of time, of comfort, or the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for the common good. On this day, the eve of daylight savings, when the darkness seems to leap ahead and stifle the sun, we can remember that there have been dark times before. We all cry when taps is played. But the darkness will not last forever. The dawn will come soon.
My Truant Pen 