I spent this evening, the first of 2008, at a funeral. Kind of. The funeral is on tomorrow morning and as I'm back to work then (groan and whimper) I offered to head along to the prayers tonight with my dad.
Instead of the dead man being waked at home or being brought to the church, he was being laid out in the nursing home where he'd died and the family were having a few prayers said over his coffin. Dad and I arrived early, having allowed ourselves an unnecessary extra half hour to get lost en route. We wandered in the door of the home, me feeling queasy at the now all-too-familiar smell of old age and sickness (Crash Grandadicoot is still in hopsickle) and told the lady at the desk that we were there for the prayers for Martin. "Would you like to go on in?" she asked. "Um, okay..." She led us around the corner to a small candlelit room where he was laid out in the coffin, five chairs on either side of him and a small altar down by his feet. We sat down.
I didn't know the man. His son and daughter-in-law are close friends of my parents, friends of the family, generous and affectionate people that I have all the time in the world for. My heart has gone out to them over the last few weeks as they watched his rapid decline; It wasn't easy for him at all. So there I found myself, sitting next to my dad and a mere foot away from the corpse of a man I'd never met, only the second corpse I've ever seen in my life. It was surreal. We had half an hour there before any of the family arrived and when they did, I worried that it might seem intrusive - us sitting there talking quietly in the room with Martin's body. Dad handled it beautifully. As we heard them approach we stood to greet them, handshakes and hugs. "We were a little early, so we kept him company." The priest arrived in, said a few words, read from the gospels, offered his condolences. Martin's two sons spoke briefly after he'd left, his grandson read Paddy Kavanagh's On Raglan Road, which was apparently what he sang each week as his party piece for the home's Sunday afternoon cabaret. He only knew half the words, they said, so they left a handwritten copy of the poem in with him in his coffin. I don't know why it's important to me that it was handwritten, but it is.
Instead of the dead man being waked at home or being brought to the church, he was being laid out in the nursing home where he'd died and the family were having a few prayers said over his coffin. Dad and I arrived early, having allowed ourselves an unnecessary extra half hour to get lost en route. We wandered in the door of the home, me feeling queasy at the now all-too-familiar smell of old age and sickness (Crash Grandadicoot is still in hopsickle) and told the lady at the desk that we were there for the prayers for Martin. "Would you like to go on in?" she asked. "Um, okay..." She led us around the corner to a small candlelit room where he was laid out in the coffin, five chairs on either side of him and a small altar down by his feet. We sat down.
I didn't know the man. His son and daughter-in-law are close friends of my parents, friends of the family, generous and affectionate people that I have all the time in the world for. My heart has gone out to them over the last few weeks as they watched his rapid decline; It wasn't easy for him at all. So there I found myself, sitting next to my dad and a mere foot away from the corpse of a man I'd never met, only the second corpse I've ever seen in my life. It was surreal. We had half an hour there before any of the family arrived and when they did, I worried that it might seem intrusive - us sitting there talking quietly in the room with Martin's body. Dad handled it beautifully. As we heard them approach we stood to greet them, handshakes and hugs. "We were a little early, so we kept him company." The priest arrived in, said a few words, read from the gospels, offered his condolences. Martin's two sons spoke briefly after he'd left, his grandson read Paddy Kavanagh's On Raglan Road, which was apparently what he sang each week as his party piece for the home's Sunday afternoon cabaret. He only knew half the words, they said, so they left a handwritten copy of the poem in with him in his coffin. I don't know why it's important to me that it was handwritten, but it is.
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
