The first funeral
In May 2015 mum died. Grandma - mum's mum - died a few months later in the August followed by my dad in September. Here I share the story of mum's funeral, the first funeral that year.
I wrote this in the latter half of 2022 finally feeling ready to explore the memory of mum’s funeral, seven years earlier. It was in many ways a beautiful day. Rich in music, art, memories, family and friends. I shared a short excerpt at our writing group’s Spoken Word evening in May 2023 and submitted it to the Fish 2022 Short Memoir Competition where it made the short-list.
Nice Shoes
A voice whispers ‘nice shoes’ as I walk up the aisle. The tap, tap, tapping of my too- tight, too-high heels punctures the organ music reverberating around the church. I’m trying to arrange my face into a suitable expression of grief, but I have no guide and I worry I just look blank, impassive, unfeeling somehow. I try to summon what I hope is an appropriate smile of reassurance for my children, as yet unseen, already in the church with my in-laws.
I’ve prepared myself as much as I can for seeing mum’s wicker coffin, forgetting or rather not realising that it will be draped with a white sheet. A sheet that doesn’t quite hide the legs and wheels of the metal trolley, bringing back memories of the hospital trolley she spent too long on just weeks earlier. No pallbearers for mum, she was wheeled in before we arrived. It’s a blend of ritual and practicality she’d appreciate.
Textures and sounds collide, and I walk, balancing on my toes to lessen the tap, tap, tapping of my heels while my eyes hover just above the coffin and to the steps up to the altar. I squeeze Andy’s hand and lean into him.
Tap, tap tap, on the stone slabs. Physical pain and grief are channelled to my feet and toes. I haven’t held a violin in my arms for decades, but halfway up the aisle my brain recognises this for what it is, a performance and I mentally zip myself up inside my clothes to prepare myself.
I don’t know how I’m moving, but I soon find myself genuflecting and crossing myself at the end of a pew, I slide across so that I’m in front of my parents in-law and three children. I give them a quick nod and mouth, ‘Are you ok?’.
Saskia in her pink cardigan and summer dress, the boys in shirts and trousers. So incredibly composed and I feel pride but wish they were sitting with me. ‘Why didn’t I realise I’d need them next to me?’
I glimpse my aunt, mum’s sister, her husband and their three daughters, our closest cousins behind them, feeling who isn’t there as much as who is. Grandma in her care home, three hours away. Too frail to travel to her daughter’s funeral. Who’s with her while we’re here?
Other faces blur, indistinguishable from each other. I’m not wearing my glasses and I don’t want to squint and stare. I turn back to face the altar, unbutton my jacket and slump a little before leaning forward to search my bag for my glasses and my handkerchief. Ginny presented us with a selection of Liberty print handkerchiefs before the funeral, found in mum’s chest of drawers, one for each of us.
I pick up an Order of Service, one of mum’s sketches on the front, and read the pages. My hands and mind needing to be busy, reading the hymns we’ve chosen sparks memories of school assemblies and Sunday mass.
There’s a squeak of wheels and I turn to watch Matthew pushing dad up the aisle. They stop at the end of our pew, and he parks him next to mum’s coffin, double checking the brakes. Dad’s visit to A&E a few weeks earlier following an incident that left him upended outside Mark’s and Spencer’s is still fresh in our minds. We stifle awkward smiles as we check that we’re all ok, that Matthew’s ok, and that dad’s wheelchair isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I look at dad and wonder what he’s thinking. What’s he feeling? This silent, solid man married to mum for just shy of 52 years. Despite, or maybe because of those years she wouldn’t allow him to see her before she died. A clear, unequivocal ‘no’ when we asked if dad could come in from his care home to the hospital just days before her final journey to the hospice.
I mentally thank Louise and Matthew for taking on that conversation with dad. I couldn’t, wouldn’t do it. Yes, he’s my dad, but my allegiance has always, will always be with mum.
I settle into the organ music before Father Philip invites us to stand for the first hymn. We’ve chosen the music carefully, music the thread running through her, all our lives, strains of ‘All people on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice...’ bounce off the stone slabs and stained-glass windows. The organist hidden from view; but his presence felt and very welcome. He knows how to keep the pace going, which would please mum. Dirge like hymns one of her pet hates.
I feel a warmth rush over me as Louise’s opera singing colleagues and friends hit their vocal stride, I can’t not smile, and I sense heads turning behind me to see where these voices are coming from. I feel safe in these musical hands and singing voices.
My own voice though is small, cracked. I swallow notes and mouth the words. I inhale and exhale allowing the tears and snot to flow twisting the once pretty, now sodden handkerchief in my hands. ‘Come on, you can do this.’ I squeeze my eyes shut to quell the tears; I didn’t even know you had these Liberty handkerchiefs. What else don’t I know?
Dad looks up at Father Philip and down at the Order of Service, ‘I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters...’ He doesn’t need to look at the words, few in this congregation of part-time, sometime Catholics need to read the words. The refrains part of our DNA, despite some of our haphazard church attendance over the years.
But what’s he thinking? Denied that final conversation, that final, ‘I love you,’ and chance to say, ‘I’m sorry, it didn’t work out how we wanted, but look. Look at what we achieved despite it all.’ We children have our doubts but go along with his assertion, encouraged by the Parish Priest that ‘Patsy would want a requiem mass’. How could we deny him after being rejected with such finality in her last days.
I feel myself slipping into old church habits. A childhood of Sunday masses has left its invisible mark. My body and brain instinctively know what to do. A Catholic church still a place of comfort and familiarity, even though I’ve never set foot in this one before. Dad, lost in his prayers always finding comfort in the structure and routine of organised religion. Mum leaning into its community and family. Both needs being met here today.
‘All the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me, to the Lord our God.’ I do and don’t turn my head to look at the coffin as I join in the prayers. She’s not there. She’s there. She can’t be in there. Did she really want this? A Requiem mass? I feel like I don’t, didn’t know her at all.
I thought we had time. We weren’t done. I wasn’t done having you always at the end of the phone, ready to reassure, analyse, listen and soothe me when confounded by my own life. Those many, many never-ending conversations. Concerts you’d been to, planned on going to. Your diary still full of dates you’d never see. Tickets bought in hopeful anticipation. Coffee and cinema dates with friends. Visits to us, the others. Always happy to talk about us, your family.
This is all wrong. You were 73.
I look at dad in his wheelchair. Stooped, head bowed. ‘Tiny Tom’, this once 6ft 4 rugby player deflated, but always smartly dressed. Today in his new Marks and Spencer suit and neat shoes resting on the footrests, the wheelchair holding him in place.
It’s all wrong. Dad wreaked havoc on his body. Strokes, heart failure, misdiagnosed lung cancer yet still here at 88 years old. He battered himself with decades of drinking, followed by decades of abstinence. But we’ve always known his family are physically indestructible. We’d prepared for his funeral already, that’s how we knew about the natural burial site, but it wasn’t meant for mum. Noy yet.
This is so wrong. Mum was fit. Healthy. Complex. Curious about people, about life. Active. None of us realising how this deadly melanoma was silently roaming through her lymphatic system, wreaking its own havoc. Surgery a blunt instrument and no match for this secretive, agile cancer. You were full of plans. We doubted you’d carry them out – your lack of confidence and a lifetime of listening to your unfulfilled ambitions the root of our cynicism. We didn’t think, couldn’t imagine death would stop you.
I feel cool air circle around me despite the June morning beyond these dark wood pews and I crave something to wrap myself in. A blanket, a duvet. Anything to protect myself, to soften the grief. Keep it out. My navy wool suit offers scant protection as I shift into my habitual role of coping. Not falling apart, even here. Now. At mum’s funeral. I keep the heat on the emotions down to a low simmer.
Andy delivers his reading from The Book of Wisdom with a calmness I can only admire and could never have mustered. ‘Thank you’ I mouth as he sits back down. Inadequate thanks for his calm, solid presence. Mum’s cousin, John. Formerly Father John, our family priest, our go-to for weddings, first communions and succour steps forward to read the Bidding prayers. His soft voice is immediately reassuring. If he’s here, we’ll be alright.
I auto-pilot my way through the rest of the service, gently escorting Olly up to the altar to take his first communion since his First Communion just two days earlier. Another date mum didn’t make. Making my way back to the pew I find him sidling in next to me, seconds later Saskia and Charlie join him. The children needing mine and Andy’s arms around them, and us needing to wrap our arms around them.
I let Mary Oliver’s words wash over me. ‘To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.’
Years later I think I’m discovering her for the very first time after taking a poetic turn in a virtual bookshop, only to see that these lines had soothed me years before at mum’s funeral. These words are now framed on my office wall next to a grainy black and white photo of a young mum, before she was my mum.
We follow mum’s coffin down the aisle after the Final Blessing and, eyes downcast despite an energetic rendition of ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory,’ and that wretched tap, tap, tap of my heels again. We form a respectful crush in the vestibule while the funeral director steers mum in her coffin, now minus the white sheet, towards the hearse. Polite, stilted mutterings are exchanged as we work out who’s going to the burial in which car and how those who aren’t going will get to the restaurant and her wake.
Our small private family burial still involves multiple cars, and I find myself a seat in the official black family car with my older siblings. A break from our dirty, rubbish strewn family car and a chance to just sit and breathe. Insulated from the world outside.
‘It looks like laundry basket’ Ginny quietly mutters and there’s a glint in her eye as we follow the hearse out of the church car park and make slow progress out of the city.
‘She was always putting a bloody wash on, wasn’t she? We couldn’t leave the house without her shoving something into the washing machine.’ I respond to silent nods.
Damp cloth in hand, poised to wipe down a surface, sticky hands. A child’s face. To this day I picture mum in her final Cardiff galley kitchen. Sometimes holding a damp sponge, other times a knife, pausing mid-sandwich making to make a very important point. Always talking. Always offering an opinion. Clear blue eyes, petite in her sensible cardigans and comfy jeans and ‘but is it machine washable?’
We make our way slowly out of Cardiff and my foot presses down on an invisible accelerator. We pass traffic lights, complicated crossings and junctions and busy retail parks before we hit rural peace and idyll. A turn into a country lane and it’s nothing but Welsh pastureland as far as the eye can see.
We park and follow the hearse on foot until it comes to a stop, and mum is carried over to her unmarked grave. The mood has shifted, a sombre cloak has descended and we’re quiet. We physically give each other space, so incredibly respectful of each other.
She didn’t give us any clues about her funeral. She’d slowly, quietly faded from sight over the last six months of her life. I tried, but never managed to wrestle the whisps and whispers into anything solid. I couldn’t, still can’t make sense of her disappearing from life. I wonder what she thought of it.
We walk carefully on the uneven ground, our clothing incompatible with our natural surroundings and I try not to think about the people buried beneath. It’s serene but surreal, no headstones, names, dates or quotes. I try to rein in my imagination as I stumble over the green, uneven land, while Matthew pulls dad’s wheelchair backwards towards her grave. We spread out as we walk, the closeness of the church and cars left behind.
Can I still call myself a catholic? Because I’m surprised when the parish priest steps forward to read the final prayers before we throw flowers, dust and earth onto her coffin. We linger over a final good-bye before forcing ourselves to turn and walk away.
It’s not my first funeral, but it feels like it.
The wake: artwork, Ella Fitzgerald and a lot of chatting
I admire Louise and Ginny’s ability to talk, to work the room even at a wake, even at mum’s wake. I naively thought that others would be there to look after me, always the youngest child, and it takes a while for my brain to realise that we’re the hosts. We’re the parents now and I struggle to shift into this next level of performance. I shy away from eye-to-eye contact, not wanting to face other people’s grief. A mirror I want to cover. I share their grief, but I can’t let myself to feel it yet. Later. Tomorrow. After the funeral. Then the grieving can begin.
Louise, always the protective oldest sibling spies me and steers my elbow towards Flora. Tall, effortlessly elegant Flora, once mum’s teenage Italian pen pal turned lifelong family friend. All Italian, now Parisian elegance. She’s holding a petite Dior handbag, upright in her immaculate trousers, Chanel-esque jacket and ballet shoes. We admire her Dior, but her ghostly face is all of us. Bereft. Shock. Numb.
I can hardly bring myself to look at her grief. I force a smile, but words stick in my throat. I need a drink but try to stay in the conversation, conscious Louise wants to leave me with Flora so she can check in on someone else. My head turns to the bar, taking in who’s there when I hear a faint voice, ‘What have you done with your shoes? I loved the shoes you were wearing in church earlier.’ One of the opera singers, I’d guessed she was the source of the shoe talk in church, her love of bright red lipstick and good accessories well known.
‘God, but they were so painful. I had to swap them in the car before we got to the burial ground, or I’d have sunk before I got to mum’s grave. Can I grab a glass please?’ I catch the eye of a passing waiter, take a sip and turn back to Flora.
But I realise she’s as incapable of conversation as I am, and we stand together in not quite silence as Louise moves off. I feel lost in this room without mum to guide and steer me. It’s silly. This is a room full of people I’ve known all my life, but the introverted part of my sociable introvert nature takes hold. I just want to sit in the corner with a drink and some food and watch, just watch and observe. But this isn’t the deal, there’s an expectation I’m struggling to meet.
I find a quiet spot, slightly away from the melee at the bar but not so much to be rude and turn to face the rest of the room. I look between heads and shoulders to the windows overlooking the marina, sea and sky beyond the tops of the yacht sails. It feels overwhelming and I have nothing to say. I see and hear my children gravitating towards me and me to them. Overwhelming for these small people too and their kindness undoes me. Old enough to remember grandma’s secret stash of wine gums in the car.
Slowly I pick out music in the background - Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald - the playlist I spent hours putting together. That was my job, the others arranging the funeral in the weeks after mum died, while I returned to the safety and security of family life in Dorset. I found pockets of solace in dog walks on the beach while taking daily calls that made sure I was included in the decisions, felt part of it. I needed to be with my family, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling dislocated from all of this. I’m full of pride and guilt at what my sisters and brother have done here.
Because this is mum, in this room, right now. Music fighting to be heard above the chatter that’s growing in volume as we collectively exhale. Those who came here straight from church relaxed out of their funereal darkness already, the rest of us playing catch up, searching for light and conversational flow.
‘God. She’d love this, wouldn’t she.’ I say to no one. I see Ginny and Matthew in animated conversation with people we’ve known our whole lives. She’d love the people and the music, wouldn’t she? But what would she make of seeing all her artwork on the walls, on the tables for everyone to see. All that art she’d worked so hard to keep under wraps.
We see the story of mum’s life on the walls and tables. Large confident, bold oil paintings from the seventies. We three girls in Clothkits flares and ponchos, Matthew in his Saracens rugby shirt. The painting of the four of us a present for dad’s 50th in 1977. These confident brush strokes disappear into the eighties, returning as timid watercolours as dad unravels and finds oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. Mum working in jobs she resented but doing them to put food on the table, a roof over our heads. This wasn’t part of the plan when they married in 1963, for either of them.
Sketchbooks piled on sketchbooks show an instinctive, natural talent with a pencil and paper I wish I’d inherited. Then there’s my three children captured on the beach, an incomplete portrait in acrylics. Their eyes are smudges, but it’s still unmistakably them and a sign that mum had been rediscovering her art mojo. Gentle, firm brush strokes capturing their essence despite her self-doubt.
‘God! You were so talented, and so infuriating. And kind. And generous. And prickly.’ All packed into a diminutive 5ft 3 frame. I miss her.
The photo I took of mum and the kids on the beach just six months before she died will forever seared into my memory. ‘Shall we get an ice cream?’ she said, perfectly timed to break up the beach rugby threatening to get out of hand. Four pairs of blue eyes stare into the lens. Four pairs of hands holding cones of vanilla ice cream, defiant almost. The conversations we had that day about our move to the seaside, the places she still wanted to visit. Amsterdam for the art galleries, back to her beloved Italy to put her conversation classes into action. So many plans, a conversation full of hope.
This is all wrong.
‘Mum, have you seen these sketches? I really love these.’ Charlie calls out and I weave through the tables to look at sketches I’ve never seen before.
‘What’s the date? Oh, these are from the 1950s, she must have done these at art school, in London. It’s weird though, I’ve never seen them before, and it doesn’t even look like her style. It’s completely different from anything else I’ve seen.’
My eyes lift taking in the room from this new vantage point, and I spy dad with his best man and wife. I feel the love surrounding him, see their looks of concern, intent listening. They know what dad needs right now. They might not see each other that often but decades of friendship, even dad’s hands-off version of friendship, brings warmth to their corner of the room.
‘That’s our barn! I didn’t know she sketched our barn!’ My attention is pulled back to another of mum’s schoolfriends, or was it choir where they met as teenagers? She and her thirty-something daughter, the daughter living on borrowed time. Short-lived respite from treatment for a cancer that will cut her life short before the year is out. Both smiling at the discovery, and at each other. I’m delighted to see them, knowing how mum had visited them both following the diagnosis. Making tea, sitting quietly with them and their trauma.
‘Have it, seriously. You should take it with you. She loved coming to visit you in Cornwall. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you she was sketching while she was there with you. Actually. I can believe it. She really didn’t enjoy putting her art in the spotlight, did she.’
‘Matthew!’ dad’s voice booms across the room and heads turn. I see dad marooned at the far end of the restaurant, and that the numbers are dwindling, friends and family setting off for long journeys home.
‘I need you to move me?’ his voice cross, irascible. Understandable.
Untidy tables and chairs block his way and while I see and understand his disadvantage, sitting in his wheelchair amongst the standing crowd, he’s always been on the outskirts, I think. Never at the heart of gatherings, always leaving the chat to mum. Did she chat so much that it kept him out of the conversation, or did she chat so much because he didn’t? I look for a sketch I know must be here somewhere. Dad, slumped on a sofa, eyes closed with a speech bubble, ‘Great party David’. Always happy to sit in the corner, to snooze and not engage.
‘Mum and dad are thinking about taking the kids back to Bristol.’ Andy appears alongside me.
‘Of course, that makes sense. We won’t be too far behind, will we? We’ve got another few hours in the car when we leave your parents and you’ve got work tomorrow, the kids have school and I need to see the sea.’
‘Your mum was, so good at bringing us together, keeping us all connected.’ a cousin on my dad’s side, appears on my other side. I haven’t seen him in decades, never met his wife, but I know Louise keeps in touch. His words pierce through the mounting fog. I’m so conscious, overwhelmed with my loss but I’m starting to see the impact mum had on everyone else here in the room, and beyond.
We think this is how we’ll remember 2015, but we’re wrong. Twice more this year we’ll meet like this. Mum today and in three months we’ll meet to bury grandma. A month after that we’ll meet to bury dad.