We Walk Each Other Home

Notes

OK… back from digging up bones in the rabbit hole. This song is NOT a eulogy for a dog.

I started out thinking it was. But then again, it doesn't focus on fond memories or specific qualities of this guy's dog. It deals with the dog's companion's experience of loss.

People keep mentioning Ram Dass's book called "Walking Each Other Home," which I wasn't familiar with at all until last night. It's about life, death, and companionship and it resonates with the song's themes, particularly the idea of transforming darkness into light and finding meaning in loss.

It's super deep. Oh, and Ram Dass is based! If you don't know, go look him up… his story involves LSD, Timothy Leary, Harvard, etc. How did I miss this?

But back to the song.

Verse 1 — the morning stairs, the alarm that won't bark, the bus stop, the cigarette rides. I think this is straightforward enough, right?

Verse 2 grapples with the process of euthanizing a pet. The "bottle in the cupboard" is the poison. It symbolizes the hard yet compassionate choice to put your pet to rest. Contrast that to the "Gideon drawer" — a reference to a Bible. He also mentions prayer. He is seeking spiritual solace. These elements reflect the mix of practical decisions and spiritual ones involved in such a profound moment. Pet lovers… if you know, you know!!!

The final verse — in the live versions he goes back and forth between either the sun, or the darkness, telling the lamplight it's time to make shadows on the street. The sun rises and sets on us all every day. As the sun goes down or darkness creeps in, the light turns on. I think this metaphor ties everything together: finding light in the darkness.

"Behind every door and window, a thousand stories we'll never see." Still trying to fully grasp this. I think he's just saying we all have our own stories that go untold to the rest of the world. He's setting up the bridge as well — because Dass ultimately explores how we all weave together into a collective existence. The shared experience of life.

My absolute favorite line of this song is in the bridge: "Sticks and bones, buried and thrown." Both objects symbolize the remnants of life. When I thought hard about it, sticks and bones were both once living trees and beings. Death is unavoidable for every living thing, right?

Dass covers a lot of this in his book (which I've only read the Cliff Notes of, btw…). But how JB's tied the loss of a dog and the Dass teachings together is brilliantly illustrated in this line. Buried bones, and thrown bones. There is a cycle of nature.

"Freedom lies within our ability to fully accept the finite nature of everything we've ever known and loved."

"I'll be your stepping stone." To quote Ram Dass: "The stepping-stones for this journey are within each of us. Don't look outside for gratification, look inside. Inside is your Guru, your God, whatever names you'd like to use. Your strength is all your intuition, your voice from within."

This is a really special song! The music is a quintessential companion as well. And "we walk each other home" has A LOT more to it than walking your dog. Which I need to do now, by the way…

I'll leave you with something from Reddit that helped put the song title, and all of it, into perspective: "We're all just walking each other home." Inherent in this phrase, first repeated by Baba Ram Dass, is the concept that our present home is not our ultimate home… It is in our acceptance of our limitations where we meet the timeless, loving essence within each of us. A bittersweet duality, where the two become One.

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