Low life | 30 May 2019

Considerate to the last, she had her order of service arranged in her mind. I sat close with my notebook. She didn’t want a eulogy, she said, but she is definite about the hymns and readings. To kick off, she would like that old Russian roof-raiser ‘How Great Thou Art’. Then, ‘Lord, For the Years Your Love Has  Kept and Guided’. And for the big finish: ‘In Christ Alone (My Hope Is Found)’. If there is to be a psalm, she would like number 121: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’

Lately there’s been a funeral a week in the village church. Currently on the mantelpiece are three funeral order of service booklets commemorating deceased neighbours. I heard Michael Heseltine say on the radio the other day that by his reckoning a mere 100,000 ‘old white people’ stand between him and his dream (or fantasy) of human progress for this country. I would say to him, please don’t worry, my Lord. Around here, even in their decrepitude, those who were children during the last war — bombed, bereaved, evacuated — are obediently doing their bit for your latest version of the greater good by dying like flies. From the front of these order of service booklets, their former, much younger selves smile out, startling to those who knew them only in old age.

And does she have a photograph in mind, I asked her? No, she said. Whichever. I went to the cupboard where her old photo albums are stored, pulled down a stack and started leafing through it. I’ve never been sentimental about my own or my family’s past. I don’t even remember much of it. Also I am indifferent to photographs because I don’t believe in them.