My twin brother and I learned, “To My Old Brown Earth,” by Pete Seeger in our senior year of high school. The song is a slow, a cappella funeral song that calls upon the living to be happy and bids farewell to the world, and we sang it in harmony at our senior recital. Our parents had sung it at the funeral of out great grandfather eighteen years before we learnt it, and they taught it to us. A year later we sang the song at our great uncle’s memorial service, trying to hold it together through the end of the song. And three years later, last April, my brother and I again said “To My Old Brown Earth” at our great-grand parents’ memorial services. It appears that the song has become our family’s preferred funeral song.
