Saying goodbye

Two funerals in the past fortnight for your author and as a direct result therefore also as few reflections upon mortality and life. As it happens, I was attending the first of them – of someone I barely knew – only as a companion to someone else, but yesterday’s farewell was to a formidable but fun-loving lady whom I happened to know quite well.

It is an obvious point to make but, when someone dies, every person who knew them will have their own personal memories, based upon their own first-hand experience. When you attend their funeral, therefore, people will naturally wish to celebrate the departed soul and so will share with those around them the memories or incidents that most impressed and/or which they think will most vividly reflect their personal positive view of their character.

Yesterday this was very much the case. I know not whether it was the size or makeup of the congregation, or the particular acoustics of the crematorium where it was taking place, but the volume and intensity of the conversations in the waiting room as we prepared for our service to begin made coherent understanding of what was being said by any individual something of a lottery. I was not alone in spending a good deal of my time looking around the room with a semi-thoughtful expression (or what I hoped passed for one) whilst actually thinking nothing at all beyond “How much longer before the service starts?”

By my calculation, yesterday’s simple and evocative service took no more than thirty-five minutes from start to finish.

My father commented to me after my mother died that one of the ironic and sadder aspects of the event was the experience of reading through the letters of condolence. How much more apt it would be if the deceased could somehow have had sight all the pleasant things that people chose to write or say about them after they’d popped their clogs … but before they actually had!

There’s often a similar sense of regret and frustration when you compare what you had learned of a recently-deceased person in your own lifetime from first-hand experience – and what you then find out about them after their death.

Yesterday’s funeral was a case in point. Although I knew something of the subject’s multi-faceted career and sailing prowess – and always enjoyed her eccentric and feisty character and the lively conversations we invariably used to have – I had no idea at all that for many decades, including after her retirement, she had worked for a number of important departments within MI6.