Funerals vary so much. Its odd really; grief one would suppose is a universal feeling. Of course it depends on the age, the circumstances, the closeness of the deceased. If they are very young or struck down in their prime, their parents and siblings, wives and children are overwhelmed with unutterable sadness and a feeling of such desolation and misery that one’s very limbs will not function properly. The grievers gait is slow and they are bent as if in very old age.
There are cultural differences too. The traditional Irish wake where the recently departed is stood upright in his coffin and all around him the mourners celebrate his life with song, dance and drink. West Indians also treat death less reverentially as a celebration of past life; deeply held religious beliefs where death is believed to be a bridge to another world helps mourners stay cheerful.
Forty two years ago I went to the first funeral of my life when I was thirty three years old. I haven’t stopped going to them since.
The early events I went to were sombre, sometimes heart breaking events where the chief mourners were dumb with misery and tears.
As I’ve got older many of my friends have died as have my Mum and Dad and all my Uncles and Aunts. When a friend dies if one hasn’t seem them for some time their is a feeling of detachment. After the usual expressions of regret to the family and children there is acquaintance and friendship to be renewed with fellow mourners who haven’t seen each other for years.
I went recently to the funeral of John Davies, one of my oldest and best friends. He wasn’t particularly old by the standards of today, he was seventy, but he’d been ill and bedridden for some months and though not in great pain he slept most of the day and seemed to gradually waste away and descend into everlasting sleep.
He was a popular man very well known in the East end and there was five or six hundred people at the crematorium to see him off. The reception was at a hotel where his family had seen to it that there was lots of good food and plenty to drink.
It all seemed so unreal to me. I was surrounded by friends and family and we were all laughing, joking, eating and drinking and telling each other what a wonderful send off it was and how John would have loved it; I guess he would have. Apart from tears from some grandchildren and a few muffled sobs in the chapel there seemed no evidence of overwhelming grief. I felt a loss within me. A sadness that I’d lost a great friend but is as if a stoic acceptance has come with age that its a natural and normal process as if only at the last stages of life this awareness becomes fact. All through young and middle age one regards death as unlikely so its not contemplated and is so shocking when it comes; but in the elderly it is embraced not eagerly but with equanimity and a sense of the inevitable.
I decided when I got home from the funeral that I wanted a small one. A muted affair for immediate family and close friends. My life has been a sad one in recent years and I don't want jokes and celebration round my grave..I would like some tears falling on the new turned earth.
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