Conversation at a Funeral

On arriving from afar…

Way back when...

Patrick: I drove past our first house on Park Road.

Charles: How does it look now?

Patrick: Much the same. No additions or alterations. Change of paint.

Charles: How many years since you saw it?

Patrick: Way back. About thirty. Where are you living now?

Charles: I took refuge on a ten-acre block out in the hills. Bit of bush, a few hens, and too much time to think.

Patrick: Sounds idyllic. Beats trudging through airports.

Charles: And now you’re back attending funerals, same as the rest of us.

Patrick: Yes. Parents go, teachers go, now our peers are going.

Charles: Makes one wonder about one’s own passing. I’ve laid a few tentative plans. A simple cremation, ashes scattered among the manuka on my block. No speeches.

Patrick: I suppose that’s what we’re all after. Not grandeur, just quiet endings.

_________

Voice-over

Charles reflects that when they were young the talk was about houses, children, jobs, the future. Patrick follows up about putting things in order so others don’t have to tidy up after. 

R.I.P.

Another funeral…

Elizabeth: There was Jack’s funeral last week and now there’s Janet’s tomorrow.

Robert: And then Tom is fading fast so his funeral is likely to be in a week or two.

Elizabeth: He is after all, what, 91 or 92.

Robert: They come in clusters. We’ll be in one of those clusters when our number comes up.

Elizabeth: It’s a bit like playing Bingo, yes. I’ll miss Janet especially though. Only 69. She was a friend from 30 years ago. That makes it upsetting.

__________

Voice-over

Thus the great and less great pass, and among them, quite a few friends. One seems to arrive at the end of the road wondering where all one’s traveling companions have disappeared. R.I.P. (requiescat in pace).

The night before interment

Where to leave the box…

Sarah: You can’t leave your mother’s ashes in the car overnight.

Antonio: Nobody’s going to steal ashes.

Sarah: Someone might steal the car.

Antonio: Hmm. Maybe you’re right. I am supposed to look after her.

Sarah: And tomorrow she’s being buried so this is the last night you get to spend with her.

Antonio: I’ll put the box in her favorite chair.

__________

Voice-over

A significant chance to farewell one’s mother. It could turn into a wake.

Government order: No travel to funerals allowed

Cousins discuss a passing by text messages…

Adelle: So we can only farewell her by social media.

Molly: The messages coming in are sympathetic.

Adelle: It must have been difficult for her in her isolation in the retirement home, sitting by the window every day, no visitors allowed. I never heard a word of complaint from her.

Molly: Except she used to say, “I can’t understand what’s going on in the world. Has everybody died?” Inside, she was very anxious.

Adelle: Life was tough for her at the end. She once told me, you really don't want to live past about 90. It all goes to pieces then.

Molly: Both of your parents have been the most incredible people.

Adelle: Nice of you to say so. When we have had our parents in our lives for more than sixty or seventy years it’s a huge gap when they go.

Molly: I am sure they will live on in the character of all your family for generations to come.

Adelle: Thank you, but which bits of their DNA ended up in each of us?

_________

Voice-over

Focus on only keeping pandemic case numbers distorts how people pass away from other things.

Uncollected Ashes

Ambiguity about ashes...

Potomnik: I’ll pick up the urn for Walter Wiczelaw tomorrow.

Tòtka: Which Walter is that? Walter K. or Walter P?

Potomnik: You have an urn for Walter P. Wiczelaw? He died in 1976.

Tòtka: Yes. We’ve been waiting for his family to pick it up.

Potomnik: For 45 years? His ashes were supposed to have been scattered.

Tòtka: They were never collected.

Potomnik: Well, his children have all died, we are the grandchildren and it would be nice to inter his ashes in a grave.

Tòtka: That’s reasonable. Then you can have somewhere to visit him.

Potomnik: Hmm, maybe two Walter Wiczelaws in the same graveyard. Uncle and nephew. 

___________

Voice-over

So you can request to have your ashes scattered but rellies forget and eventually their descendants want to park you in a grave anyway so they can come and chat with you. Forty-five years of waiting to be picked up and then no rest after you are entombed.

A felicitous funeral

A departure…

Gilbert: We gave him a good send-off.

Claire: Yeah. All the right people came: family, colleagues, community.

Gilbert: Cooperative priest. A nice balance between religious and secular for a man who had difficulties with the church.

Claire: Nice service program. The photo show was moving. The music matched.
Gilbert: And the venue was perfect. The last building he designed as a practicing architect. A theatre.

Claire: Speeches were concise and professionally delivered. Eulogy from the family, one from the mayor, and eight bells and bugles from the Vets for his military background.

Gilbert: All the rellies could treat it like a family reunion. All in all, it went off well.

_________

Voice-over

Architect. 1921 to 2020. 

Après funeral of a farmer

A comparison…

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Doug: Two funerals in a week!

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Diana: Both very different. One of a national celebrity, a writer, the other of a family and community figurehead, a farmer.

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Doug: How did the funerals play out?

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Diana: The writer had half a dozen eulogies, and songs, and a film of her life. The eulogies were presented, no, performed by her friends in the arts world.

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Doug: And the farmer?

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Diana: Oh, it was just as well executed. Eulogies and songs. But the tone was different. Family and friends, mainly farmers, remembered him, a bit tearfully, a little self-consciously, in eulogies. The songs were … popular ones.

__________

Voice-over

If we are to go out with people celebrating our life joyfully, including performers and artists among your friends in this life, can burnish an image. Yet to see a mime at a funeral though.

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