Welcome to my blog where it is six in the morning; frost is on the ground, ice on the cars, and the half-moon is bright in the clear sky; a touch of winter at last. It’s probably foolish to say so but a winter that doesn’t begin to mid-January feels that it can’t be so bad.
It turned cold last week as we drove to Manchester to be at the funeral of Dave whose place in my life I mentioned last week, although I forgot then, in my meditation on ‘you never know what would have happened,’ that after he took over my life I was at a loss for a few months and then I went to India where I met a guru and learned the thinking that is the support of my life now. After I came back I had another family, the three sons of which accompanied me to the funeral, out of their respect for Dave and their solidarity with their sister. When I picked up my middle son, his son, aged nearly two, was waiting for me holding a large packet of chai tea bags. More memories to burn the soul with.
On the way we stopped at a motorway services station and I noticed a group of five or six people looking uncomfortably smart. Yep, fellow mourners. We went to Dave and Barby’s house first where I was surprised to see a hundred or so sympathy cards which perhaps shows just how ‘expert’ I am in my supposed expertise because it hadn’t occurred to me that this is what people did.
During a three hour waiting period more and more family and friends gathered at the house so at any moment one could observe the oddest pairings as brief conversations between people who didn’t know each other hubbubbed throughout the house. For me it was quite moving to see Chris, Barby’s twin brother with whom we lived in Anglesey 40 years ago, and his 3 kids mingling with mine and Dave’s sons and trying, but failing, to make any sense of their parents’ distant love lives.
After a couple of hours my daughter took me upstairs to practise the reading she had prepared to express her feelings about Dave. All I could do was cry.
When we arrived at the chapel-crematorium, having driven in a funeral cortege, (nb to self, leave instructions, don’t drive me slowly anywhere), we were amazed to see what seemed like hundreds of people gathered, most of them looking distinctly northern in their black suits with the jacket buttons undone to let in the cold. Because there were so many people, my partner, me and my 9 year old grandson were sent in first to make sure we had places to sit. (In the end only half the mourners could fit in the chapel.) We, therefore, we’re the only people in the chapel when the coffin led procession came in which meant that my grandson got to see how upsetting his mother was finding the pall-bearing role. It was a shame for my grandson, I think, that he was the only child there but he behaved himself remarkably and even when he was in tears he just dealt with it himself. It felt that as he sat next to us he suddenly became a lot older.
It is always strange hearing a funeral celebrant talking about the person they didn’t know and you did. Also you get input from various members of various family systems wanting to describe the man they knew; all-in-all, however, it was a fair and honourable reflection of a man who more or less kept himself to himself but did it so well you felt you had almost shared a deep moment with him.
After the funeral came the pub which is not a comfortable environment for me a) because I don’t like the noise and b) the more dunk people get the less I care what they are saying, so I played outside with my grandson who by that time was in an excellent mood. And then the long fast drive back everyone sunk in thought.
This week I read that heart attack risk is 21 times higher within the first day of a spouse death and six times higher than normal within the first week. Fortunately Barby has survived thus far (and didn’t have a previous heart condition) nevertheless she will be exceptional if the stress and grief don’t leave some physiological trauma. Grief, not surprisingly, was a major Unit in my ‘Death and Society’ Master’s Degree and I must admit that as a neophyte sociologist I was both excited and stunned by the discovery of how much of our behaviour is culturally conditioned. The word grief is, of course, a highly imprecise one and covers a multitude of emotions, cognitions, behaviours and physiological processes. There was much in the literature on grief that I felt was somehow flawed, not least that in most cases the grief that followed an event – such as a death – was seen as being caused by the event, rather than triggered by it. I have begun looking at these things again today although I’m rather hoping I don’t get too obsessed by it as I suspect I did with my articles on spirituality, the second one of which seems less popular than the first.
So it goes.
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