Ageing is not an avoidable affliction which strikes randomly and inexplicably, but a universal, inescapable and invariably fatal condition imposed on those who, by good fortune, good management or good genes, avoid the egregiously unattractive alternative.
One of the feu duties levied for survival is the inexorably increasing obligation to attend funeral services of people we love.
So your average old bastard becomes something of an authority on the form of the service itself.
And with the gathering of experience, we develop an idiosyncratic sense of what constitutes a good send-off.
But when the send-off is for someone we love so deeply that the service becomes a replay of the shock and loss we felt at the occasion of death itself, it is just another ordeal to endure.
The quality and appropriateness of the funeral is just another dreadful event
in the whole ghastly catastrophe.
My father's funeral service, my first experience of a personal tragedy, was a basic, functional, utilitarian event, a puritan ceremony which could have been designed by Cromwell himself, conducted by a minister who had never known my father or his family, but still felt entitled to give a potted version of his life.
The man he talked about, I had never met.
Where was the loving, funny, dedicated, clever, generous, wonderful man who gave me everything I was and had?
It was like the funeral of a stranger.
When my mother died after 21 years of Alzheimer disease, her final 10 years spent in confusion and terror, it was, simply, for her family and undoubtedly for her, a relief.
My sister and I arranged the funeral. There was no involvement of the employees of the god who let this beautiful, gentle and loving creature suffer for so long.
My sister's husband spoke at the simple ceremony at the crematorium with knowledge and affection about the lady we loved, but who had left us all so many years before.
We played her favourite music, and quietly and sadly said our final goodbye.
*****
My father's funeral service, my first experience of a personal tragedy, was a basic, functional, utilitarian event, a puritan ceremony which could have been designed by Cromwell himself, conducted by a minister who had never known my father or his family, but still felt entitled to give a potted version of his life.
The man he talked about, I had never met.
Where was the loving, funny, dedicated, clever, generous, wonderful man who gave me everything I was and had?
It was like the funeral of a stranger.
When my mother died after 21 years of Alzheimer disease, her final 10 years spent in confusion and terror, it was, simply, for her family and undoubtedly for her, a relief.
My sister and I arranged the funeral. There was no involvement of the employees of the god who let this beautiful, gentle and loving creature suffer for so long.
My sister's husband spoke at the simple ceremony at the crematorium with knowledge and affection about the lady we loved, but who had left us all so many years before.
We played her favourite music, and quietly and sadly said our final goodbye.
*****
So here are my instructions for my last public appearance. (Are you paying attention, JB?)
1: If my brother-in-law is still around, he's got the MC gig.
2: Whilst the (disappointingly small) group of mourners who are not close relatives drift into the crematorium chapel (I'm picturing the Goonellabah crematorium here), I would like Rachmaninov's Andante from his Piano Concerto No.1, op.1 playing softly on loop, to emphasise that this is not the time to chat with friends and reminisce about things that I may or may not have done after a long afternoon at the Regatta Hotel.
3: And, because a good funeral service requires overt displays of grief ( differentiate the occasion from, say, the Annual General Meeting of the Bundarra Country Women's Association), some musical signals are required to indicate that the time for uninhibited weeping has arrived.
I want Silly Wizard's "Golden, Golden" and "The Valley of Strathmore" played in honour of my beautiful wife and my beautiful daughters.
Then, just as the sobbing is easing off, Arvo Part's "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten", which expresses, in a way that no words can express, the immensity and finality of the ending of a life.
And, because those who took the trouble to come and see me off may then need reminding that they should get over it and get on with living, the "Theme from the Monty Python Show", followed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's "Goodbye-ee".
4: I would like my brother-in-law to say a few words (and few they will be, as I trust he will omit mentioning my many shortcomings).
5: I want my borrowed molecules returned to the earth and the air, to again become part of everything.
Some of them came from Lochinver. Might be nice to take them back there.
Finally, some advice for my beautiful girls from the great Scottish writer, William McIlvannney:
"Face your despairs by letting them take place.
Don't deny them with displays of determined nonchalance. They're too real for that.
Deny grief and it becomes a sapper, shallowing your nature.
You have to go through the sadness as you would go through the Roaring Forties.
You batten down and let the bad winds blow.
They will bring you to yourself."
"Face your despairs by letting them take place.
Don't deny them with displays of determined nonchalance. They're too real for that.
Deny grief and it becomes a sapper, shallowing your nature.
You have to go through the sadness as you would go through the Roaring Forties.
You batten down and let the bad winds blow.
They will bring you to yourself."
