Funerals

Sunday, 8th November 2009

Funerals, a clergyman complained recently, are not what they were. Here in middle rural England they are exactly what they were. Yesterday, from eleven o’clock on you could not have parked a child’s tricycle anywhere in the village and at eleven thirty, they were standing five deep outside the church. The funeral was of a popular local man who lived just beside the lych gate, knew everybody for miles around, was a church warden and parish councillor. A blog or so back I referred to him obliquely, one of those who had died of lung cancer, a gross unfairness as he had never smoked. His funeral was on what would have been his 70th birthday. I do not know how many our church holds but it is not big, in spite of its impressive tower and grand peals of bells, but that only goes some way towards explaining why there was standing room only and the congregation overflowed, by over fifty people, into the churchyard.

It was the same last year when one of the village farmers – with a farming family going back several generations – died. The hearse drove at snail’s pace from his farm down through the village to the church with seventy members of the family walking behind it. As ever, there is the funeral rite from the Book of Common Prayer and familiar hymns from Ancient and Modern – never My Way or Somewhere, over the Rainbow . Both men were buried in our churchyard under mounds of flowers, in both instances a lot of money was collected for local hospice charities and for the ancient and beautiful church.

Remembrance Day service will have been particularly poignant, as both men were staunch attendees and supporters – the farmer wearing a suit which he donned on two other annual occasions only (unless there was another family funeral) – Easter Day and Harvest Festival.

Tradition counts for a great deal in the country. The way things were done by parents and grandparents and so on back is still deemed by most to be the right and proper way. Rites of Passage have great significance.

Tomorrow sees the funeral and Service of Celebration for a magnificent lady who lived in a village 3 miles away and who was the sort of person I often think everyone should aspire to be when they grow up – gracious, gentle, generous, thoughtful, fun, life-loving, enthusiastic about everything, a supporter of so many events both in village and county – and the best company in the world, making as little of her later-life blindness as would be possible.
She died very quickly, aged 93, in full possession of all her faculties other than sight to the last. The service will be traditional. But afterwards, less traditionally, there will be fireworks. Those would not always be appropriate, but in this case they absolutely are and Hersey will love them.

Everyone sends off their loved ones in their own way, the way which is fitting to them and although it may annoy and embarrass some clergymen, if a cremation, bright clothing and My Way, or a wicker coffin and a woodland burial with readings from some eco-Bible seem right, for the dead and for the living left behind, then let them be right – just as our very traditional village funerals, black ties, hats and coats all round, are right for us.

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Anne Wotana Kaye

November 8th, 2009 11:38pm Report this comment

It sounds wonderful. Not multicultural, nor diverse, not reaching out to all the odds and s*ds busy turning this into an anteroom of the Third World or even a Fourth World Country. Church bells actually pealing and no objections that they may offend and distract from the calls of a nearby minaret. Just like an episode straight out of "The Archers", the daily sedative the BBC allows those citizens who might actually arise and take action if they knew how really bad things have become in the towns. Worth dying to be buried in such a traditional manner. The only pity is one wouldn't be able to partake and enjoy the proceedings.

Nicholas

November 9th, 2009 9:54pm Report this comment

I had occasion to reflect on the passing of my uncle and aunt yesterday, after encountering a photograph of my uncle in his army uniform as a young man. It was sobering to realise that the house and the village they lived in have changed beyond recognition, the garden they lovingly tended has gone and there is nothing left there to mark their life there together. My aunt was a gentle, compassionate lady who loved animals and birds - and her garden. Her ashes were scattered in the garden so there is not even a tangible memorial to her.

An old aerial photograph of their house shows my uncle's car in the driveway as though he has just stepped into the house - so near and yet so far. One can almost touch the various memories but they are elusive and one feels, sadly, if only I had made more effort to say this, or to do that.