by
timekillingkid
@ Monday, 18. Feb, 2008 - 14:19:28
In an earlier post I’d mentioned my difficulty at suppressing humour at tense moments, so you can only begin to imagine how I coped with my first funeral service as an adult. This is somewhat longer than my posts tend to be, so I’d advise you to make yourself comfortable…
My aunt was not a particularly nice woman, and the beatings she used to administer my cousin (which there was no moratorium on even when we had family trips to Auntie Pat’s during childhood) are one of many reasons why there’s no need to feel any twinges of guilt for laughing.
The afternoon before the service my cousin (eventually) picked me up in Hendon, and the first topic of conversation on the drive up to the Midlands was the songs chosen for the service. I correctly identified Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler on my first go, but it took a couple more to get the second (Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On). The latter seemed an odd choice because the reason we were driving up to her cremation was that her heart hadn't gone on. Both songs, in my opinion, are mawkish dirges, which suffer the same flaws of my (former) best friend’s chat-up technique in being rendered completely insincere by trying so hard to be sincere.
My uncle was unhealthily dependent on my cousin at this time, and part of her duties (and by association now mine) was to try and convince him to attend the funeral parlour before they nailed the lid shut. After some gentle persuasion we headed off to the funeral home. I’m bracing myself on the journey over as I know light relief will be in short supply.
So you can imagine how I felt when we pull up opposite the funeral home and I notice there’s a Jewson ('the UK's leading supplier of building materials') next door to it.
For understandable reasons, I’m the last to get out of the car, and am just about getting my composure together when a text arrives from my sister:
Yo bro. Where are you? We’re completely lost. Mum and dad are fighting over the map, and the dog keeps barking and puffing in my face.
At this point I had to duck under the dashboard and laugh with the safety catch off.
Realizing that I’m prolonging my uncle’s discomfort, and I am after all partly responsible for his being here, I step out of the car and head for the funeral home (trying hard not to look at the Jewson sign on my way in).
We’re greeted by the undertaker, whose sympathetic burr was somewhat undermined by him telling us how he had his mum prepared in his own parlour (cheapskate).
My aunt was a battleaxe of a woman, but the final stages of her illness caused a dramatic loss of weight in a short time. Hence preparing the body was a challenging job for the undertakers.
Which might go some way to explaining why they fucked it up.
I’m not particularly looking forward to my final game of chess with Mr Death, but my aunt seemed to have taken the defeat badly. She looked seriously pissed.
I’d expected her to look as the ‘deceased’ do in open coffin funerals on TV. Instead, I’m greeted by a scowling corpse.
The jarring incongruity of it makes me want to laugh, which I obviously can’t do, and this just adds to my physiological urge to laugh. All I’ll say is I told my mother not to attend the funeral home before the service (she’d been told by her other sister that there’d been ‘difficulties’ with the body).
The service was held the following morning, and after staying over another aunt’s we drive over to my uncle’s to form the funeral procession.
I didn’t expect my cousin to perform a particularly dignified and commanding role during the proceedings, but him and his little clique of friends were shocking. Rather than turn up in Sunday best they’d dressed in Saturday night best, or whatever it takes to get into a cheap ‘smart trou and shoes’ Midlands hard house club. My sister later categorized them by what dance music she reckoned they were into and accordingly what drugs. I simply factored them into the catch all category of ‘pikeys’.
The long black limousines arrived to take us to the service, barely on time.
Which was more than you could say for the service in front of us.
The drivers had obviously been instructed to take the long way round, which after a time became evident to me, must have been painfully apparent to my uncle and cousin in the leading car, and after a while becomes embarrassing when you’re chugging along at 30mph. You obviously can’t overtake a funeral service, so after a while we had half the Midlands toiling behind us.
Arriving at the service, I noted the mourners from the late-running group ahead of us filtering from the back of the crematorium, and the strains of Wind Beneath My Wings drifting from the front.
Walking into the service was one of the hardest moments of my life. I am somewhat self-conscious at the best of times, so having a whole congregation turn around and stare at the immediate family as Midler warbled was tough. It was like they were all daring me to laugh at them.
Rather than a somber occasion it all had the strange sense of unreality of Scott and Charlene’s wedding in Neighbours, or the surrealness of the televised bit of Phil Neville’s wedding when brother Gary was doing the Bible reading.
The minister conducted the service in the familiar sing-song cadence that men of the cloth insist on. He was obviously pissed that there were no hymns during the service, which might go some way to explaining why he made basic biographical errors during his tribute. It wasn’t quite up there with the Curb Your Enthusiasm newspaper obituary typo of ‘beloved cunt’ (well ‘a’ and ‘c’ are quite close on a keyboard), but wasn’t far off.
I’d been tipped off by a friend about the point in the service when the coffin disappears from view and makes its way to the furnace, which he’d christened the ‘foot pedal moment'. While everyone was praying with bowed heads I had one eye open waiting for a discreet stomp of the foot.
Which didn’t come.
Instead there was a jabbing gesture at the podium, like someone trying to poke a small child in the eye.
And a curtain call.
The curtain began to gradually close off the coffin from view, except rather than a smooth circular curve the curtain pole was almost jagged. It took an undignified amount of time for the curtain to close, and I was just waiting for the point when it snagged and the minister had to release it by hand.
The service closed with My Heart Will Go One (there were no encores). Oh, and as we were emerging from the crematorium the next group of mourners were already filing in.
So having maintained my composure there was just the post-service spread to get through.
I couldn’t help but think to myself: ‘Is this how it ends?’ Just 30 minutes after being cast into the wind and your ‘mourners’ are pushing their way towards tables of food and piling their plates with sausage rolls and triangular sandwiches.
Maybe I’m just a newbie when it comes to the etiquette of these things. Do you just reach a certain age at which point funerals become such a frequent social occasion that you just think: ‘fuck it. I’m grabbing that last piece of cake before the second cousin twice removed grabs it’.
Wanting to smoke my cigarettes in peace without my parents doing that fake coughing that non-smokers insist on, I went outside to carry on my existential brooding (about not getting the last piece of cake).
I don’t really do tears or anger, which is why laughter is one of the few emotional safety valves I have.
So at that point, on my own round the back of the hall, I chain-lit another fag, leant against the wall and laughed cigarette smoke out of my mouth.
Because you can say what you want about laughter, but it’s nearly always life affirming (unlike cigarettes).
