Tuesday, February 3, 2015

I got to the funeral late, today. I am a late person. I had to stop and let my windscreen de-ice again. I didn't leave enough time for parking - there's so little parking in Mount Jerome. The ...gathering? had overflowed the chapel by the time I got there - people stood outside in the bright, sunny cold, and listened to the moving testimonies to the loveliness and worth of a woman who should not yet be dead. Her friends, her co-workers, her god daughter, her step-daughter whom she had loved and mothered since she was five. Her group of musicians who would congregate in her most wonderful kitchen, they played in the church, and after. It was lovely.

I gave tissues to the crying woman outside. A small girl got bored, having been so good throughout, and as the people emerged she threw a tantrum, threw herself from a crouch straight back onto her head on the tarmac. 'Maybe we should all be doing that', said the woman I'd given the tissues to. I wanted to wrap everyone up in warmth, her children, her friends. I knew three people there, people I didn't know knew her - the man who does my father's garden, a mother from school, a friend of Axl's bandmates - his sister and this woman's daughter are friends, they helped them out when his mother died. This one was hard on him, the same thing again. Degrees of separation. It's such a small world.

Funerals make me worry about who will attend mine, when the time comes. It's a selfish response, but one I can't help indulging in sometimes. What if no one knows what to say, what if there's no one there who loved me? It's hard not to see a lonely future - I don't want my kids to be left with some awkward awkwardness to manage. I don't want people to make self-conscious jokes about my foibles, or struggle for things to say.

But better that, I suppose, than someone marvellous, who was taken away far far too soon.


1 comment:

Ms. Moon said...

I am glad you went. I am glad it is behind you.
That part, at least.