Now I lay me down to sleep... [View all]

[MineralMan]

When I was a wee laddie, just learning to read, one of the first things I read was a bit of cross-stitched needlework by my grandmother, who hung two framed poems on the wall by my bed. The poems read:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.

Now I wake and see the light:
'Tis God who kept me through the night.
To Him I lift my voice, and pray
That He would keep me through the day.
If I shouId die before 'tis done,
O God, accept me through thy Son. Amen

When I first read these poems, at about age 5, they frightened me. The focus they had on dying was very troublesome to my young mind. Was that something that might happen to me? Might I die in the middle of the night or during the day? Was death that imminent and common? These thoughts troubled me for a couple of years. I eventually grew to simply ignore those two bits of doggerel beside my bed as nonsense. I wasn't seeing my friend dropping dead overnight, nor did they suddenly fall dead during the day, either.

Much later, as an adult, I pointed those needlework exercises out to my mother, who had hung them there at the behest of her own mother. I told her that they had caused me some serious anxiety when I was just a small child, and wondered why they were there as an ever-present reminder in my bedroom. My mother, who is an atheist, too, said that she never really thought about it. She had just hung them because they were a gift from her mother when I was an infant.

Today, they hang in the guest bedroom at my parents' house. When I visit, they're still there. I still think about them when I visit. I'm still puzzled why my grandmother thought they were appropriate for a child's room. I don't find them appropriate, frankly. As an atheist, I simply ignore their frightening reminder of the fragility of life and their insistence that it is some deity that allows a child to live or die, as it sees fit.

My grandmother is long dead, and I never asked her what could possibly have made her think those prayers were appropriate for a child. I wonder what her answer would have been, or if she simply did the cross-stitching without really thinking about the effects those words might have on a small child, just learning to read. I'll never know the answer.