» Putting the Fun in Funeral

Are you OK?
My mum died last year after a short illness (cancer, found too late to do much about). She had a nice funeral, inasmuch as funerals can be "nice". The organist had problems playing her instrument at the correct speed, leading to some hymn-singing difficulties, but apart from that it was all very dignified.

So I'm outside the crematorium, after the curtains have gone round my mother's coffin, the vicar's done his ashes-to-ashes stuff. It was, essentially, the worst moment of my life. I stand outside in the June sunshine, shellshocked. People come up to me.

"Are you OK?"

AM I OK? AM I FUCKING OK? Yes. I am absolutely fine! I've just said goodbye to my beloved mother, who six months ago we didn't even know was ill, after watching her decline from an outgoing, confident career woman to a shell of a person, jaundiced and off her box on painkillers. I've now got to finally admit she's gone and try to rebuild my life at a time when we should finally have started to get to know each other properly, now that I've moved out and am starting my own life and respecting the difficulties she must have had raising me. I AM ABSOLUTELY FINE. Never felt better, in fact.

I didn't say that, like. I just blew my nose and nodded while they patted me on the back.

Kinda regret not making a scene now. If you can't make a scene at a funeral, when can you? Twats.

(My dad was an undertaker for several years. I'd tell his stories here, but frankly they'd put you off using a funeral director for life and you'd have to bury your beloved in the back garden, and I don't want to be responsible for that.)
(Sat 13th May 2006, 9:51, More)