My home is across the road from a lagoon, it’s an old house with million-dollar views of the water and bush. It has a rusty tin roof, it there’s a large hole in the ceiling and it rains in my kitchen. I even have vines growing through my bedroom wall, and I kind of like that, but what I don’t like unwanted house guests. They always arrive with the first autumn cold snap. That’s when they move across the road seeking the warmth of a family home, my family home.

Unwanted House Guest
I knew I had a rat in the house, I read it in the runes-his little black dropping on the kitchen bench. This particular rat was sneaking in at night, right under the sleepy noses of our two dogs Patch and Pixie. Rat would help himself to a midnight snack, making sure always to leave his little black calling cards on the kitchen bench for me to find in the morning. Even then, I had noble intentions, I didn’t want to kill him merely remove and release him back into the wild.

​At the local hardware store, I approached the expert handyman and asked for a humane rat trap. When his raucous laughter died down, he explained. “No such thing luv, just kill the nasty buggers, funniest thing I ever heard being humane rat trap”. He handed me a very ugly instrument of death.

That night after the kids had gone to bed, I sat with the trap….To kill or not to kill Would it kill cleanly and swiftly? What if it didn’t kill cleanly, would rat suffer? What if he was still alive but incapacitated, would I have the guts to finish him off…. Would there be blood and guts?  

Late that night, instead of setting the trap, I decided to give rat three warnings, verbal not written. “Rat, you have three days to leave the house or I will set the trap.” The next morning, I found his little black runes once more. The second night “Rat you have two days to leave the house or I will set the trap” Again he mocked me with his droppings. The third night “Rat, please, please, please leave the house or tomorrow I set the trap”.
Alas, the third morning dawned with sun shining on those little vile black bullets scattered with such disdain over my kitchen bench. As with all unwanted house guests and relatives who outstay their welcome, drastic action was called for……

Madam Guillotine.
I baited the trap with organic peanut butter, my conscious smoothed with the thought, rat would enjoy a wholesome last meal of crunchy peanut buttery goodness. I pulled back on the spring, set the trap... then to sleep perchance to dream.

SNAP! 3am, a scream and the scrambling of paws. I raced to the kitchen and beheld the grisly scene…one bloodied rat running in circles dragging the trap, trailing bright red blood on the white kitchen floor. The two dogs stood in the corner of the kitchen, they looked at rat then each other “Wouldst thou put an end to this foul deed? Nay I shall not sully myself”. Their eyes turned to mine. The burden was mine and mine alone.

Clad only in knickers, I stood wondering what the hell I was going to do…when rat ran drunkenly out of the kitchen still trailing blood and headed for the lounge. Spurred into action, I grabbed my trusty broom and nudged rat towards the back door, but with every touch of the broom rat screamed, screamed! I didn’t know rats could scream!  Nudge scream, nudge scream. Every scream cut like a knife. Eventually I pushed rat to the back door where I putted him out into the yard. He flew in one direction and the trap in another. I slammed the door shut. Then I returned to mop up the grizzly crime scene in the kitchen under the accusing glare of the dogs. “Yet Who would have thought the old rat to have had so much blood in him.”

"Out Damn Spot"
I washed my hands over and over again, “Out damn spot! Will these hands ne’er be clean? No more my lord no more”
Well the next year another cold snap brought more unwelcome guests. I couldn’t face the trauma of madam guillotine again and so I after three verbal warnings I put out rat bait. I felt awful, I didn’t want anything to suffer, not even rat, but I had a family to protect. Consumed with guilt I laid out the poison…

Now it says on the poison packet that after consuming rat bait, rats will go outside to look for water. Perhaps my rat was illiterate,or a lateral thinker, perhaps a vertical thinker, because my rat decided to die in the bathroom ceiling. At first there was just a whiff of something not quite right…and then after an unseasonably hot day with the sun on the rusty tin roof, the smell of death and decay, “all the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten this little bathroom”. On that first day, you could hold your breath long enough to use the toilet but then came the flies! The room turned black overnight. A black seething mass covered every surface in the room, maggots dripped from the ceiling vent. We couldn’t use the bathroom for 10 days, and the smell lingered even longer than Lady Macbeth’s damn spot.  It seemed a fitting punishment for my heinous crime.  “Will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o that my lord no more o that”
 
The next year a new mega hardware store opened…I asked the young handyman What do you have to have to kill rats?”  “We have large range of humane rat traps, mam” he admonished and he showed me a whole aisle with a dazzling bright selection. They looked very modern indeed, lovely steel and glass apartments for rats and mice. I perused the shelf, reading all the information, gauging each humanitarian ranking. This wasn’t an instrument of rat torture this was a rat condominium. My nobility restored, I hurried to catch my rat and return him to the wild. 

​That night I placed the organic chocolate in the condo, I rushed out in the morning eager to find my house guest but he was a no show. The next night I tempted him with the pungent aroma of Italian Parmesan cheese… but still no rat. The third night I went all out wooing rat, with Parmesan cheese, dark chocolate and a bottle top filled with hunter valley’s finest chardonnay. I drifted off to sleep confident rat would fall for my gastronomic charms…

Five Star Restaurant
​The next morning, I peered through the glass window of the rat condo, no rat!  The chocolate, cheese and wine were all gone to! It wasn’t a rat trap! It was a 5-star rat restaurant.

​And so now with the end of another summer looming, we catch glimpses of pointy noses and long tails running around the outside of the house knowing the first cold spell will send them in to share in our food and the warmth of our cozy home once again. Again, I will be faced with the question to kill or not to kill. And if to kill, what manner of death should I deal? I know there is a lesson for me here, is it about guilt? Perhaps it’s about taking responsibility for my actions, but what if it’s bigger than that? For the life of me I don’t know, maybe I should consult a priest, or a fortune teller… or perhaps just ask rat, and he can spell it out for me on the kitchen bench in little black runes.

This is a story of life, death, everything in between and what comes after. It is the story of Warren Zevon, American singer song writer, death expert and me.  

I was studying for my arts degree at Newcastle University in2005. I had just begun the subject “the sociology of death dying and human mortality” when I suffered a loss. It wasn’t the death of a loved one but the death of a significant relationship.

I had fallen in love with a gifted psychic. As well as my partner, he was my teacher in all things supernatural. And he was a great teacher and soon I experienced my first clear physic vision. Sadly, he not such a great boyfriend, as my vision was of him in bed with another woman. Our short but intense love affair was over, dead. Have you ever felt your heart ripped out of your chest and stomped on?

Death, Dying & Human Mortality
Well it was in this state I dragged myself to my “Death, Dying and Human Mortality” class, grieving for every bit of my frail human mortality. My class was to pursue individual major studies on some aspect of death dying and human mortality… Fellow classmates were enthusiastically picking their topics; suicide poetry, roadside memorials and death rites were a few. I however, was concentrating on getting out of bed and trying to eat.

Then I met the late great Warren Zevon.  My brother-in-law Jack, gave me a cd, Warren Zevon’s “The Wind”. I played it…and I played it and played it. Here was a musician who understood loss. Warren Zevon wrote and recorded The Wind, his 15th cd as he was dying.

Warren wrote and sang songs of goodbye, of regrets, and of his thoughts on impending death. The songs touched a chord deep within, they gave me comfort. I remember after every song, shutting my eyes and taking a moment to say “thank you Warren”. Not only did I find comfort… but a subject for my major study; Warren Zevon.

Werewolves of London
Now I don’t imagine too of you would be familiar with the name Warren Zevon, but you might remember his hit song “Werewolves of London”, and he wrote hits recorded by many other artists. Warren was credited by his peers as one of America’s greatest ever singer song writers.

With a renewed sense of purpose, I set about researching the life, times and death of Warren Zevon.  I listened to his songs, all 15 albums over and over, day in day out, much to the dismay of my children who despaired at my taste of music and state of mind. As I researched, I realised that it wasn’t just his last cd that was an exposition on death but in fact more than half the songs in his 15-album career concerned death. On every album cover and every poster Warren had the picture of a cigarette smoking skull. Irreverent, sardonic, poignant and thought provoking, Warren explored every manner of death, dying and human mortality through his songs.

Warren grew up with death. One of the first stories his grandmother told him was how his birth had almost killed his mother. Warren’s father was a Russian gangster with a history of violence, who courted death daily. And hanging on the lounge room wall was a portrait of Warren’s uncle and name sake, a dead war hero.

Poor Poor Pitiful Me
Warren, a classically trained musician, embraced rock and roll music and the rock and roll lifestyle of excess. Warren attempted to emulate his uncle by dying a young hero, a young rock and roll hero. Besides drugs and booze, Warren also played Russian roulette with real bullets. At this stage of my break up I could empathise with his death wish, “Poor, poor pitiful me. Poor, poor pitiful me, poor, poor pitiful me!” - that song particularly resonated with my post break up mood.

After a few albums and some years, of exploring violence, excess and death, Warren didn’t die, he went to rehab. Warren’s songs then reflected his ongoing fight with alcohol and drugs while I battled my own post relationship demons, with songs like “Accidently like a Martyr. The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder”

Themes of death and dying continued to inform Warren Zevon’s songs. As the reckless years of his youth and addiction passed warren’s songs began to reflect his concern in broader social issues such as death by war, pollution, domestic violence and the breakdown of society. At this time of my post breakup blues the song the song that resonated was “Splendid isolation, I don’t need no-one, Splendid Isolation”


Life'll Kill Ya
When Warren turned fifty his thoughts turned to sickness, decrepitude and decay. His 14th album “Life’ll Kill Ya” was a hilarious, slightly scary and somewhat disturbing look at old age and dying. Out of all the ways to die, Warren said it was sickness and doctors that scared him the most.

Ironically it was Warren’s song “My Shit’s Fuck Up” about a belated trip to the doctor, which proved prophetically and fatally correct.

"Well, I went to the doctor
I said, "I'm feeling kind of rough"
"Let me break it to you, son"
Your shit's fucked up."
I said, "my shit's fucked up?"
Well, I don't see how-"
He said, "The shit that used to work-
It won't work now."

At warren’s first visit to a doctor in twenty years he was given the diagnosis, inoperable lung cancer, three months to live. Well and truly fucked, with a death sentence hanging over his head Warren set out to write and record his last album to say a few goodbyes and share his final thoughts on death and dying.

Home alone one night, I sat on the wooden floor in front of the TV and watched the documentary of the making of Warren Zevon’s final album The Wind. It follows Warren’s struggles to write and record the album as the cancer ravaged his body. The first song he wrote for the album “Keep me in your heart for a while” was the last one he recorded. Too sick to record in the studio, he recorded it at home on the lounge surrounded by his family and the paraphernalia of death.   

Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while
When you get up in the mornin' and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for a while
There's a train leavin' nightly called "When All is Said and Done"
Keep me in your heart for a while
Sometimes when you're doin' simple things around the house
Maybe you'll think of me and smile
You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse
Keep me in your heart for a while
Hold me in your thoughts
Take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes
Keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you
Engine driver's headed north up to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for a while
These wheels keep turnin' but they're runnin' out of steam
Keep me in your heart for a while
 
My tears flowed, and as they did, several shells sitting on the TV flew off then landed in my lap, then some ethereal fingers caressed my cheek …. Warren.

The weeks passed in Death Dying and human mortality, I continued listening to his songs, researching, writing and discussing my project in class, all the time comforted by his presence.

As I handed in my finished project, Warren Zevon. Songs of Finitude, I thought it only right to acknowledge Warren’s presence and influence throughout the entire project. So, with some trepidation I raised the spectre of supernatural with my lecturer “Warren Zevon has been helping me” I said, to which my lecturer replied “Oh yes, he was standing by your left shoulder every class.”

Sometime later I received MY grade, a high distinction, but it wasn’t about the grade because it wasn’t just an academic study, it wasn’t even a study about dying. Warren sung me from grief and loss, to love and life. And he taught me, death isn’t the end, there are no ends, just verses in the exquisite, eternal, song of life… and that song is love.

​And my project, well that was a collaboration of love between Warren Zevon, American singer song writer, friend and me.        

​Songs By Warren Zevon.