Today was my the funeral of my mum's best friend. Once again we went up to Hull for the service, which was lovely. Her daughter who's a couple of years older than me did a reading and managed to get through it without crying which I was amazed at. I say this because once my uncle did a speech at my granddad's funeral and basically bawled his eyes out and cocked up big time, yabbering on about crap, then read out a list of names of family members and forgot my mum. He managed to make a speech that was meant to be about someone else, completely about him. Don't stick up for him though, he's generally an idiot, this wasn't a special occasion in that sense. After that, the thought of anyone other than a professional speaking during a funeral service always makes me nervous. This one, on the other hand, couldn't be faulted.
I seem to be going to a lot of funerals lately. I always thought that once you'd been to a few, they'd get easier and you'd almost get quite blase about the whole birth to death process. Turns out that you don't ever really get used to the fact that people are going to die no matter how much of a nice person they are, or in the case of my mum's best friend, how many stray cats, rabbits and horses they take in over the years.
It's been such an emotional day, not least because every funeral I go to reminds me of the last one. By the end of the church service, I had a snotty nose and a headache. By the end of the commital at the crematorium, the tears had made my contact lenses dry and foggy, so I couldn't see nish of the lovely food I was eating at the wake. My eyes have been welling up all day because it was so strange that this close family friend was suddenly gone, even though the cancer had been doing it's work for a few months. Seeing my mum so upset was also quite hard. They were going to book into a nursing home together when they were old and wrinkley and natter away to each other all day.
And why am I blogging all this hours later? Because my laptop came with me to Hull. There's been a spate of burglaries in my area recently; with the hot weather people were leaving their doors and windows open and local theives were taking full advantage. I pulled down my blinds, locked my windows, and instead of hiding my valuables in my house, I took them with me.
It's a nice world, isn't it?
Subscribe
5 comments:
Did you make a stop in the local holding cell to visit that vile purse-snatch?
I'm sorry about your Mum's friend, Jo.
Funerals never get any easier. They just make me more aware of my own fate; more aware that death is about the people who are left behind rather than the person who has gone. They're the ones who always sufffer.
Hugs.
{{hugs}} .. death is NEVER easy. I have made the decision that the next funeral I go to will be my own! Selfish, but those funerals that go well are upsetting and those that don't are, well .. upsetting .. and I'm one to cry at Andrex adverts, people leaving Corrie or Eastenders ..
clarissa - My mum did, apparently they had her booked in to give a statement the day before, so there has been a delay in reprimanding her. They defintely know who she is though.
miss: True that, they are about the people left behind. They make the paranoid that everyones going to die around me...great...
cataclismical - Exactly - is there such a thing as a funeral going well?
In a conversation with my old man the other day after he'd been to a funeral of a neighbour, I wondered how much better it would be if you could have your funeral whilst you were still alive.
That way you could see how much people appreciated you and how much they loved you. It would be a celebration rather than a sad ceremony.
Sorry about your mums friend.
Post a Comment