Being there

Life teems with ticklish antitheses. In the midst of life we are in death: in the midst of death we are in life.

It’s a summer’s day which feels like late November. Rain is spitting; the leaves on the chestnut trees are browning. The funeral is over (I was the celebrant) and I pause to survey the scene before driving away – the huge, shagged-out cemetery, the sparse, tussocky vegetation, the numberless never-visited graves, the rows of mute headstones tied to stakes by the topple-testers, secured with bright yellow strapping. A mature burial ground like this makes visible the slow-mo obliteration of the unforgettable. Memory succumbs to amnesia.

In its forlorn heart, at the crematorium, the cherishing and commemoration of the dead goes on in the customary series of corteges and dispersals, the glossy black limousines, the laid out, cellophaned flowers, the little knots of mourners straggling back to their cars. There’s a certain sad majesty in this, a certain brave beauty. It’s a matter of taste.

The crematorium manager touches my elbow. “Your CD, mate.” It’s the CD of music we played at the funeral, which I had forgotten to pick up on my way out.

I put it on the passenger seat where it jostles another, the object of my next destination, another place suffering from municipal world-weariness, the register office, for I am to be married tomorrow. This other CD contains our wedding music. Important not to confuse them. As a springboard to connubial bliss, Michael Buble’s Lost arguably lacks upthrust.

Pop goes the corn. We’ve chosen Elgar’s Salut d’Amour. He’s a local boy, Elgar, a Wolves fan, and we like his little tune unapologetically. Oh, yes, of course, the registrar’s heard it before. We’ve chosen readings. I announce to the registrar: “This one’s an Apache blessing,” and she says “Oh yes Apache blessing” in a voice which disconcertingly reveals that we have selected the Henry Scott Holland of wedding readings.

On the day of days, James (a funeral director, as it happens, and a most remarkable one) reads the Apache blessing in his warm, shamanic voice. But, here’s the thing, unknown to us he has rehearsed everyone there in the last line and, when he reaches it, they all break into And may your days be good and long upon the earth. It’s a magical, wonderful moment. It breaks the mould of the one-size-fits-all ceremony and reclaims it for us – for everyone there.

We didn’t do the Rolls Royce and the fancy dress and the country house. We didn’t release doves or balloons or fireworks. We might have, but we didn’t. This was a simple wedding, a basic wedding, not an arm and a leg wedding.

But the ceremony had, we think, looking back, the two essential ingredients which doves and balloons fireworks and a country house and an Abba tribute band might have complemented and even vastly enhanced, but could never have substituted.

First, thanks to James’s masterstroke, it was shared. It belonged to us. All of us.

Second, just this: people came. They came from miles and miles away, some of them. They gave up their time, their Saturday, for us. None came without considerable inconvenience to themselves. Their showing up, their being there for us, their physical presence – that meant more to us than anything. It always will.

Never again will I not quite be able to make it to anybody’s funeral.