Francis goes to a funeral. One of his college friends, unmarried, has keeled over on holiday. Well, being British, he doesn't even keel over. He just sits there being politely dead in his deck chair, paperback on his lap, cold beer on the sand beside him, until the in-coming tide laps at his feet and the can starts to bob in the water, then tilts and spills, and the deckchair man comes over to see what's wrong.
His body is repatriated. There's no wife or children, just a grieving mother, which either makes it better, or worse, depending on perspective.
It prompts, as these things do, a huge getting-together urge. Francis meets up with college friends he hasn't seen for decades. They are unlikely to meet again until the next one dies. But somehow, being with these people is terribly important. Heads have to be counted, people accounted for. It's a sort of reckoning up process, a balancing of the books that must be done before life can continue.
They all decide to go to the funeral. Francis drives four of them there. The weather is terrible and the traffic stationary. They travel thirty miles in two hours and realise they're never going to make the funeral. So they decide to hold their own ceremony at the time it's supposed to start. They park on the hard shoulder and stand in a circle, dressed in black. They try to say suitable things about him but it's not easy, with the wind, and the rain, and the traffic noise, so it tails off.
While they are doing this, a lorry driver hoots at them. "F****** Catholics," he shouts.
It's not your classic benediction, but it serves. They get back in the car, grind laboriously to the next exit, turn round, go home, stop in the nearest pub and get totally hammered. "He would have liked that," they say. Francis remembers, though, that the friend took himself terribly seriously. Already he's being remade to suit the anecdotes, re-packaged in convenient soundbite-sized packages. They say we live on after death in other people's memories. Just not with any accuracy.
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18 comments:
(Am I allowed to laugh at a post about a funeral? I hope so...)
And you're so right. We DO remake people to fit our nice and tidy anecdotes, but they're generally only partially true, if at all. Very interesting post!
How considerate of the deceased not to die at his desk. There's Brit upper lip for you.
And a sentinel reminder not to work oneself, literally, to death.
Brillig: You are allowed to laugh at anything in my view.
Orchidea: And rigor mortis just serves to stiffen that old lip even more.
I think I might like to be seen-off in just that way. So much more original than the usual sort of thing, don't you think? And showing such a willingness to improvise in the face of adversity on one's friends' part...
What better way to go I ask? Benediction from passing lorry driver and all.
I quite like the idea of dying looking out to see. A bit 'Death in Venice,' though.....Bognor Regis probably better...
Brilliant. Did in one blog what Last Orders did in 300 pages.
Nothing is the same in the memory though is it, without wishing to get all Proust on you.
Anyway, I hate all that 'it's what he would have wanted' claptrap too. It's what you want, really.
SAHD: Please make with the Proust. It might spur me on to try and read it (based on quite liking extract I heard once).
I do agree with SAHD about the "what he would have wanted" claptrap! It's so true. And aren't lorry drivers so disrespectful!
Crystal x
What an excellent post showing a good bit of British stoicism on the part of the deceased and Francis and his friends.
Have you noticed that when someone famous dies everyone says what a wonderful person they were. Then you read back and you find that in the past those people were not so generous in their remarks on the person while they were still living. Strange because while they are living they could have a go at you back but once they are dead there is not so much of a chance of them getting back at you. Human nature is a strange thing.
Crystal J and Gwen:
You're so right. Death brings out the hypocrite, I suspect. Though, again, not in anyone who comments here - we see through them all, don't we?
Luck there weren't a few extra dead - standing on the hard shoulder. I wonder if Scotty got funerals right - being blasted into space??? Would be a lot funnier for those attending than all that ashes to ashes and dreary music claptrap. I have left my body to Battersea dogs home to use as food....
At my grandfather's funeral there was an elderly man no-one knew. The vicar explained that he goes to all the funerals in the church, and did we mind him being there.
Not at all. It helped swell the rather paltry crowd of children and grandchildren, and strangers always make an event more interesting.
He just stood and sat as required, and left quietly at the end.
I have to say in all honesty, that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, if my friends go to the pub and get hammered, it really will be what I 'would have wanted.'
Although I would much prefer to join them.
Beta Mum: A sort of unpaid professional mourner. Rather a nice idea.
Drunk Mummy: Me too.....
sweet and funny. I love the image of the chaps in black, all serious at the roadside..and to the pub by all means!
Love the cameo of Men In Black on the roadside - a great tribute to the deceased.
Is there no end to the interference with life which is caused by heavy traffic? - we shall all be living and dying virtually soon...
What a very polite way to die. Admirable.
I find it worrying that I now seem to go to more funerals than weddings. I'm hoping my children will start to redress the balance at some point, before I get seriously depressed.
Lady M: It was nice. Sometimes I don't think I give other people enough credit for things like this.
Debio: Virtual death sounds OK as long as I can carry on being alive somewhere else
Marianne: It is a bit depressing - where you avoid asking 'how are you?' just in case.
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