Funerals and Fripperies.

I went to a funeral today. The man in the box was seventy six, and I’d known him since he was thirty seven. Needless to say it shook up all those snowflakes of mortality-awareness that seem to be proliferating in my personal snow globe at the moment. As I watched one man drop off the end of his conveyor belt, I fancied I could almost hear the wheels turning at the end of mine.

I looked around the chapel and saw a lot of men his age and older, especially on the family side, and the place took on the air of a waiting room. All those people waiting for their name to be called…

But then I had a more immediate problem. The seating in the chapel was not overly generous, and so even with my knees together, one of my legs had to rest in intimate proximity with somebody else’s leg on one side or the other. To my left was a young woman, to my right an older man. I did the decent and proper thing and chose the older man, which made me feel virtuous but uncomfortable.

And the subject of legs led me to an observation and a question. I saw what one of the women on the other side of the room was wearing, and wondered:

If you don’t have a dark formal suit in which to attend funerals, is it more appropriate to wear smart but light coloured trousers, or black jeans? These things are important, you know? (Oh, all right, maybe they’re not.)

Finally, as I walked away from the graveside, I decided on the three instructions I must give out for when it’s my turn:

a) No mention of God, please. Jesus is OK as long as it isn’t in a Christian context.

b) If you say anything about me, please make it honest. Virtues and vices are entitled to equal billing.

c) Don’t consign any flowers to a premature death on my account. Leave them growing in the earth until they fall off their conveyor belt naturally.