With death on my mind, I snatched the chance of going to a funeral as soon as one came up. It didn’t take long. A friend said they were coming in so thick and fast she had two funerals clash on one afternoon. My friend Phil Dirtbox told me he had two cremations in a row, so half the congregation stayed in place while they wheeled in the new coffin and close family members. My girlfriend Amanda’s granny Pat had died in a residential care home in Altrincham, Manchester. Amanda was much closer to her other granny, Nanna, but we made the journey up to the crematorium, she to support her dad, and me to feast on death, close up.
We arrived at Amanda’s dad’s house. Paul, her father, was keeping a lid on his emotions by meticulously organising events, including timing the order of service and repeating: ‘It’s not a sad death. She was 97. It’s not sad at all really. She was 97… Amy, you’ve got three minutes twenty seconds for that Rabbie Burns poem.’
We left the house and drove out of the suburbs into the country on a narrow winding lane. There was plenty of traffic coming in the other direction, and when I saw it included an empty hearse I realised it was the last service leaving. We passed a village hall with men standing outside in ill-fitting suits and I said ‘That must be the place’, but it turned out to be yet another funeral party.
We drove on a few miles and soon after a farmyard turned onto the generous tarmac of the crematorium, which looked to me as though it had been built on land sold by the farmer. He probably thought he was getting a good deal until he realised how busy his road was going to get with the country’s changing demographic.
Parking was tight. Crematorium design doesn’t seem to attract the most creative architects. There was no hint of Iranian genius or Spanish flair about this miserable brick bungalow that had all the elan of a sewage works.
We arrived late, but they hadn’t gone in. The teenage grandchildren were dressed in black, which for them meant nightclub clothes, and this did add some welcome glamour. I had seen this before at another funeral, but that was a very different kind of event, and nobody thought of glamour then. Between glances at his watch, Paul issued orders to the pall-bearers and informed us where we were sitting. I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this, because Susie would without a shadow of a doubt have already made all her own funeral arrangements. She had been going over in her mind who gets in her front pew for the past ten years. She was no doubt working on the impromptu eulogy that one of her acolytes (not me) would – spontaneously – be unable to hold in. Nothing would be left to chance. The only reason I didn’t know the details was because I had a policy of not talking about any arrangements for after Susie’s death, as they inevitably allowed her to lead me into a conversation about her will, one of her favourite hobbies. She loved to inform anyone about who was getting a little bit more and who a little bit less, and precisely why. I was convinced the whole thing was a set-up. No will probably existed: she just got her fun describing one when she was bored. And as far as I could tell from their lifestyle, there wouldn’t be anything left, particularly if she and Stanley were set on becoming coke-heads.
It was cold outside the crematorium. The portico looked like something Marshal Tito would appear under. I heard that the first guests to arrive were asked if they were there for Violet’s funeral, and they naturally said no, because they didn’t know that Violet preferred all her life to be called Pat. That struck me as a strange decision, but I liked being told about it because I got an authentic glimpse into her character, a woman I had never met, and realistically was unlikely to as she was at that moment being lifted in a varnished box onto six shoulders under Paul’s close supervision.
Gaiety is deadly at a funeral, whether forced or natural, and surely more depressing than just being sad. There was a live choir which sang gospel and some show-tunes that Granny Pat liked. The celebrant was clearly a refugee from show-biz. She struck an upbeat but respectful tone, led the choir, and gave us a lung-busting solo in We’ll Meet Again, but surpassed herself when she misread the order of service and asked Amy to come forward and recite a poem by a Jewish man of the cloth called Rabbi Burns.
Paul stood proudly out front and gave an account of Granny Pat’s life that I admired because it seemed to me honest. Her two failed marriages for instance, and forgotten stepchildren, were featured in the narrative. There would be no mention of Brian, my mum’s colourful, disruptive and disobedient second husband at her funeral, that was for certain. I’m sure it will be clearly stated in her will who gives her eulogy. I’d be surprised if any of us will ever even have met the poor sap.
Granny Pat died aged 97 and all agreed had had a good innings. Though 97, three short of a century, would actually be called by any cricketer an unlucky innings. Nowadays good innings are usually in the 300s. Her demise was swift and elegant. One moment she was gaily entertaining grandchildren in her room at the care home and then she lost control of her bowels, was hospitalised, diagnosed with a tumour, put on morphine, and died a week later. My ears pricked up when Paul said ‘She was asking to die at the end.’ That sounded familiar. Everyone in the congregation thought it a reasonable request. I knew then that I didn’t think Susie’s was.
I am not sure how you would describe Susie’s innings. She certainly hogged the crease, and survived quite a few appeals. She just wasn’t – yet at least – the kind of batswoman to signal to the pavilion that she was ready for a declaration, even if she was on 87. And if given out by the umpire I have no doubt that she would have called for a referral to the TMO and stood her ground until every spectator was slow handclapping her.
As we filed out into the whipping Cheshire wind, I remembered the last funeral I had attended: an absolutely heart-breaking occasion on a warm summer day, for my cousin’s 21 year old son. He had killed himself over a lost love. He too had asked for it, but none thought his request legitimate. Granny Pat’s funeral was not like Barney’s. Outside the Altrincham Crem the youngsters high fived each other, because to them death was a distant event, rather as we had all thought it should rightfully have been for Barney.
I wandered around the back of the building for a cigarette on my own. Death made me want to smoke. It should have a warning on it. I found a skip full of cut flowers in cellophane and twisted wreaths spelling out GRANDAD and MUM. I have so many times stood in front of a piece of art that purported to be about death and always felt entirely unmoved, or rather unconvinced. But this discarded collection of what I believe are termed floral tributes, many I am sure sent from people who were not at some ill-attended service in the crematorium, spoke to me of the futility of doing anything graceful or meaningful in the face of death. Flowers in cellophane? Who thought that up? Who honestly believed that a man grieving his son would be consoled by a bunch of petunias that would end up petals-down in a skip in a service bay next to a broken-down car, some planking and a cracked urinal?
A tarmac path wound in a sickly curve between garish trees, strange bushes and concrete ornaments, as though the challenge was to create the most unnatural environment possible. Maybe the garden of remembrance’s function was to console those newly bereaved by making them remember how ugly life could be.
Speeding towards the wake and our first drink, we nearly had a head on with a hearse, this one fully loaded. If we had crashed – and god forbid there had been fatalities – we would have been described by the crematorium as passing trade.
After the party we shambled, plastered, back to Paul and Paula’s house to do some more serious drinking while the youngsters went off to the gym. Paul was an Immigration Appeals Court Judge, and a few of his old muckers who came back to drink around the kitchen table were lawyers. In a gap in the conversation, I said ‘My mother has asked me to help her kill herself. Oh, and her husband.’
David, an engaging criminal lawyer, a small man with a sparkle in his eyes and a well polished joke always near his lips stared at me. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said, suddenly not drunk. ‘It’s murder. You are an accessory. Before the fact. No matter what the circumstances are, I couldn’t get you less than life.’
Paul asked ‘Have you considered taking her to a country where it’s legal? Like Switzerland?’
‘I did mention Switzerland to her,’ I replied. ‘But there’s too much red tape. What if I just quietly scored 4 grams of heroin and slipped it in her coffee? No one would know.’
‘You could get busted buying it. Possession with intent to supply.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said another drunken lawyer, or he could have been a judge. I was playing with fire here. ‘You could argue that it was intended for personal use. That would reduce your sentence considerably.’
‘But he would have to bring some evidence.’
‘You would have to ask your mother to testify it was to kill her. But that could raise issues in itself.’
They all started laughing, and I felt it was at my expense.