eulogy

You tried

28 June 2013
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: celebrants, eulogy

One for you celebrants.

In a deceptively ‘unclever’ eulogy for James Gandolfini, David Chase, creator and head writer of the Sopranos, offered this thought about the subordinate value of coherence  in speechmaking:

I remember how you [Gandolfini] did speeches. I saw you do a lot of them at awards shows and stuff, and invariably you would scratch two or three thoughts on a sheet of paper and put it in your pocket, and then not really refer to it. And consequently, a lot of your speeches didn’t make sense. I think that could happen in here, except in your case, it didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, because the feeling was real. The feeling was real. The feeling was real. I can’t say that enough.

He addressed, tacitly, the darker side of Gandolfini:

The paradox about you as a man is that I always felt personally, that with you, I was seeing a young boy. A boy about Michael’s age right now.  Because you were very boyish. And about the age when humankind, and life on the planet are really opening up and putting on a show, really revealing themselves in all their beautiful and horrible glory. And I saw you as a boy – as a sad boy, amazed and confused and loving and amazed by all that.

In pursuit of this idea, Chase understands the illustrative value of an anecdote.

We were on the set shooting a scene with Stevie Van Zandt, and I think the set-up was that Tony had received news of the death of someone, and it was inconvenient for him. And it said, ‘Tony opens the refrigerator door, closes it and he starts to speak.’ And the cameras rolled, and you opened the refrigerator door, and you slammed it really hard — you slammed it hard enough that it came open again. And so then you slammed it again, then it came open again. You kept slamming it and slamming it and slamming it and slamming it and went apes*** on that refrigerator … And I remember telling you, ‘Did I tell you to destroy the refrigerator? Did it say anywhere in the script, “Tony destroys a refrigerator?” It says “Tony angrily shuts the refrigerator door.”That’s what it says. You destroyed the fridge.’
… … …

You tried and you tried, more than most of us, and harder than most of us, and sometimes you tried too hard. That refrigerator is one example. Sometimes, your efforts were at cost to you and others, but you tried.

Abridged version of the whole eulogy here. 

Life stories don’t tell half the story

20 June 2013
Charles
18 Comments
Categories: eulogy

For the living there is much pleasure to be derived from surveying a person’s life  when the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and their work is done. Dead, in other words.

Works in progress – biographies of the living – just don’t cut it.

Death focuses the mind on existential matters. The human mind abhors cosmic chaos and seeks to make sense of it. Considering the immensity of the universe and the littleness of a brain, you could call that either intellectual bravado or heroic defiance. Up here in the Midlands a dying man recently designed elements of his funeral and had the words ‘What was that all about?’ inscribed on the cover of the service sheets. Brilliant. Unsettling.

The living respond to a death with versions of the life story which draw threads together, discern patterns, make connections, explain anomalies and draw conclusions. Most of us feel our lives to be somewhat of a muddle. Fear not. Just as our deathbeds will be smoothed and tidied when we’re gone, so will our lives be, also.

Which is why we love to read obituaries in the newspapers. In the broadsheets, they follow the same format. First, the life is summed up in a single sentence:

Scholar of Latin literature with an extraordinary gift for communicating his enthusiasm for his subject

Chindit veteran who led an exhausted company of Gurkhas in a victory against a far larger enemy force

Offbeat actor and poet who played a fragile Tarzan in an Andy Warhol movie

Poet and pacifist admired for his translations of Rimbaud and Apollinaire and a leading figure in Soho’s artistic scene in the 1960s

Then follows a paragraph or two containing an illustrative anecdote which epitomises the dead person. Sometimes, a photograph serves this purpose better.

Taylor Mead’s bottom was a legend in the film world. The 1964 film ‘Taylor Mead’s Ass’ was simply footage of his naked buttocks, for over an hour, recorded for posterity by Andy Warhol.

John Lucas could claim, although he seldom did, that he had returned from death or at least from pretty close to it. Contracting sandfly fever in deep jungle during the second Chindit operation, he had to be abandoned with a full water-bottle and his revolver. Miraculously, he came round after two days and managed to catch up his column and continue on the line of march.

One day in 2007 David West went by train from Corbridge in Northumberland to Sanquhar in Dumfriesshire, carrying a long axe for use in a friend’s garden. He put it in the rack. At Carlisle he found himself surrounded by railway police. “Offensive weapon, officer? Let me show you: there is no room here to swing an axe . . .” This event prevented his journey to Sanquhar, but displayed his enthusiasm for explaining what he regarded as obvious even when prejudice or fashion might see things differently.

There then follows a chronological account of the person’s life. The account of  famous person’s life seeks to tell the whole story, secrets and all, sex secrets especially. The narrative is shaped by the author’s verdict, which is normally foregone. It is this subjective element that belies the author’s protestations of of objectivity, and accounts for the great number of disparate biographies of famous people. Mrs Thatcher has already spawned half a dozen, pro and con.

The life stories of ordinary folk like us as told in funeral eulogies are altogether different. The element of verdict — whether we were a Good Thing or a Bad Thing — is diminished. As is the shock-horror revelatory element. The prevailing element, as in biographies of the famous, is the analysis of what made us tick. That’s what everyone wants greedily to know – or have affirmed.

When all is said and done, we will, when we are dead, as we do while we are still living, mean different things to different people. We each spawn a bunch of differing life stories according to how we affect people.

The version offered at our funeral will be very much the authorised version, the official biography, because it will be a narrative created exclusively for the front row. There will likely be plenty of soft focus. There may also be any number of edits. In the matter of our faults, there is likely to be explanation and absolution. Not quite a pack of lies — but a long way from the whole truth. Closer, actually, to myth-making. But that’s okay, because the mood at a funeral is normally magnanimous.

The creation of a pen portrait of a dead person by a celebrant is the outcome of a negotiation with the immediate family, and of family members with each other. The edits are determined by consensus.  Some families will go for a warts and all approach. Others will require the warts to receive expert cosmetic treatment. The resulting depiction, if it’s the work of good wordsmith who speaks well, is likely to be regarded as quite as marvellous and valuable as a portrait in oils. If it plonks the dead person on a rearing white charger and puts a sword in his hand — well, a celebrant just has to go along with that. Sir Joshua Reynolds didn’t complain, he just banked the cheques. It’s not the job of the portraitist to speak truth to she who pays the piper.

This being so, I find it hard to understand the practice of those celebrants who treat a ceremony as if it were a present to be unwrapped in front of the family. To do so misunderstands, it seems to me, the nature of the commission. It’s also far too risky. A funeral is no place to misspeak. 

But there are two sides to this, I am sure. I wish I could see the other. You’ll probably point it out to me. 

What will be the one-sentence summary of your life, do you suppose? 

In praise of the well-judged anecdote

11 January 2013
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: eulogy

We are indebted to Anne Barber for making this paraphrase of what the Daily Telegraph’s obituaries’ editor, Harry de Quetteville, said on Sunday’s Broadcasting House on dear old Radio 4. 

We all love a good story, but a good anecdote is even better, briefly, amusingly confirming or upsetting the reputations of those we thought we knew. Such stories can make the people next door seem famous and reveal the famous to be reassuringly like the people next door. 

How can a great yarn about a man help us imagine his character? We all love a good story but a good anecdote is even better! They are the threads of gold in life’s rich tapestry. Such tales can make the people next door seem like the rich and famous and the rich and famous seem reassuringly like the people next door. What the good anecdote can never be is dull. It is wit that we most enjoy;  the best no doubt are revealing, risqué even.

The 17th century writer John Aubrey summed up his contemporaries in a book entitled ‘Brief Lives’. He knew that the anecdote was the key to communicating a subject’s personality.

The well judged anecdote is uniquely telling. For facts and figures help us to understand achievements but only stories allow us to understand people.”

Catch it on Listen Again. Start 20 mins in. Thanks, Anne!

RIP CMJ

3 January 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: celebrants, eulogy, obituary; epitaph

“Tony Greig died of a heart attack on Saturday. It was probably for him a merciful release because the late stage of any cancer is often hell on earth.”

So wrote Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times on 31 December. He knew what he was writing about. He died of cancer himself on New Year’s Day.

Cricket has attracted more intelligent commentators and inspired more good writing than any other sport. Compare the panel of experts on Match of the Day with that on Test Match Special. CMJ was a paragon of his trade and a great character, too.

So it is entirely worthy of him that there should have been such a rich outpouring of obituaries to mark his passing. Only a sport as literate as cricket could have achieved this. His obits reward study, too, even for those who give not a jot for the deeds of flanneled fools. They are models of their kind. 

CMJ was a character in ways obituarists dream of. His scattiness was productive of myriad anecdotes, all of them brilliant. He was also an advanced technophobe whose mishaps with his laptop were legion.

Richard Hobson in The Times recalls: 

In Lahore once, he could barely disguise his pride as he handed over a piece of paper with what he said was a wi-fi code, having managed to explain how to log on to the hotel’s internet. I lacked the heart to tell him it was nothing more than a receipt for a coffee. 

The pick of the crop of obits for CMJ is that by Simon Barnes in The Times. It really is as good as it gets: 

That voice, brimming with love, the lightest possible top-dressing of irony, flowing with easy precision from a million radios. So that wherever you happened to be, in a stuffy flat, lying in the garden, cruising the motorway, in bed in a different time zone, doing the washing-up, you were there too, the swallows skimming low across the fielder-crisscrossed grass, the sun still warm, the shouts of the players, the sigh of disappointment from the crowd, the solid smack of one that comes clean off the middle.

Life ought to be like this: always an hour after tea, England always 300 for two, the sun shining, the world untroubled and Christopher Martin-Jenkins at the microphone.

He told us about cover drives and yorkers and legside nurdles and the one that goes on with the arm. He told of a game played on six continents of the world. And always, his voice sang of his love for all this. It was a voice that seemed to call the swallows themselves into being.

AFTERTHOUGHT – Cricket commentators are famous for the way that, when rain interrupts play and there’s nothing happening, they carry right on chatting animatedly for as long as the downpour lasts. Such is their love of the minutiae game that they always have plenty to say.

There may be food for thought here for funeral celebrants. From time to time you travel back from visiting a family and you reflect that there’s very little, almost nothing, to say about the person who’s died. A blameless life, wholly uneventful. Aaaargh. (I’ve done it myself.)

This isn’t meant as a criticism. But if it’s cricket commentators’ love of the sport that gives them plenty to say about an uneventful game, perhaps the lesson is that it’s a simple love of human nature rather than any higher cleverness that can transform the minutiae of an uneventful life into something compellingly interesting. 

Is ceremony dying?

9 August 2012
Charles
17 Comments
Categories: ceremony, crematoria, direct cremation, eulogy, Formality vs informality, funeral customs, funeral trends, Memorial service, Requiem Mass, Ritual

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

This seems a strange question just after economically-challenged Britain has hosted the Olympics, a no-expenses-spared ceremonial games that unites nations in celebration of sporting prowess.

But as the cult of individuality nibbles away at established social conventions, more and more people seem to be caring less for ceremony on a more intimate level. It didn’t seem particularly surprising when a woman of my acquaintance announced on facebook she’d just had a quickie marriage in a register office, adding friends would be invited to a bash some months after the honeymoon. I’ve also attended a memorial drinks party several weeks after a no-frills committal to which only family were invited to the crematorium. As we tucked into canapes, the only significance of the occasion was that we all knew the reason for being there, and our conversation reflected this fact.

Even those who opt for ceremony can sometimes offer reasons other than a deep emotional or spiritual need to mark a profound rite of passage. Some admit to getting little satisfaction out of the ceremony itself, saying it’s just the bourgeois thing to do—and a means to the end of gathering people together for that social jolly afterwards.

It goes without saying there are many ceremony options available, though more for marriages than funerals. If a register office is deemed too sterile to get married in and you don’t want a church ceremony, you can choose any number of venues from a beach on a paradise buy cialis online melbourne island to an aristocratic stately pile. If a crematorium is deemed too soulless for your funeral plans, the alternatives are more limited.

Some non-religious folk opt for a church funeral followed by a brief committal at the crematorium, seeing this as the best way to do justice to the dead through words and music before the final farewell. However, while some liberal churches allow risqué eulogies and secular music, traditional churches remind us we’re in a house of God. When in Rome…

Some again opt for graveside ceremonies in woodland cemeteries, seeing this as solving the time problem of the crematorium, but with natural surroundings which might appeal more than incense-scented churches, with their icons making visible religious purpose.

Meanwhile, others are opting to get the cremation over with swiftly so they can plan a ceremony with the ashes rather than the body. This can, of course, be anything from the aforesaid memorial party, with urn of cremains in attendance, to something more ritualistic such as the scattering of ashes in a favoured, natural beauty spot.

Time and money are important considerations in life, and both can be found more readily with pre-planning. But there’s more to meaningful ceremony than advance scheduling and financial planning. Whether it’s a hit-the-spot celebration-of-life speech or a requiem mass, providers must provide, and receivers must be open to their cathartic potential. It’s a two-way process. Or is apathy as relevant a consumer choice as any other?

‘Moose…Indian’ – whose last words?

7 May 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: eulogy, Memorialising, obituary; epitaph

Posted by Vale

150 years ago yesterday Henry David Thoreau died.

I’ve loved him ever since I came across his views on the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Emerson had written in praise of it, but Thoreau – with something of the prophet in him  – refused to be enthusiastic simply noting that “perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

He invented an improved pencil, but, having done it once could see no purpose in doing it again, even though its manufacture would have made him a fortune. Instead, he lived by his hands and his wits working out in the world how best to live in it.

Emerson’s eulogy is worth reading as a shrewd record of the man and an introduction to his thought and unique life. Emerson finishes with:

‘The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst of his broken task which none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.’

The full text can be found here. 

 Thoreau’s final words are wonderfully enigmatic:  ‘Now comes good sailing’, he said, followed by ‘Moose…Indian’.  

Quote of the day

2 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: eulogy, Quotes

“I was deeply moved by the appreciation shown by many of my children’s peers for my address at my wife’s funeral; their expression of my bravery for doing so was extremely heart warming. I didn’t feel brave, but what was I to do? What better time to offer a celebration of her life and her love for her children and their circle of friends.”

Source

Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison

4 November 2011
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: eulogy, Humour, Memorial service, tributes

Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison at the memorial event at the Hollywood Bowl:

When they told me they were going to induct my friend George Harrison into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame posthumously: my first thought was – I bet he won’t show up.

Because, unlike some others one might mention – but won’t – he really wasn’t in to honors.

He was one of those odd people who believe that life is somehow more important than show business.

Which I know is a heresy here in Hollywood, and I’m sorry to bring it up here in the very Bowel of Hollywood but I can hear his voice saying “oh very nice, very useful, a posthumous award – where am I supposed to put it? What’s next for me then? A posthumous Grammy? An ex-Knighthood? An After-Lifetime Achievement Award?

He’s going to need a whole new shelf up there.

So: posthumously inducted – sounds rather unpleasant: sounds like some kind of after-life enema.

But Induct – in case you are wondering – comes from the word induce – meaning to bring on labor by the use of drugs.

And Posthumous is actually from the Latin post meaning after and hummus meaning Greek food.

So I like to think that George is still out there somewhere – pregnant and breaking plates at a Greek restaurant.

I think he would prefer to be inducted posthumorously because he loved comedians – poor sick sad deranged lovable puppies that we are – because they – like him – had the ability to say the wrong thing at the right time – which is what we call humor.

He put Monty Python on here at The Hollywood Bowl, and he paid for the movie The Life of Brian, because he wanted to see it.

Still the most anybody has ever paid for a Cinema ticket.

His life was filled with laughter and even his death was filled with laughter… In the hospital he asked the nurses to put fish and chips in his IV.

The doctor – thinking he was delusional – said to his son “don’t worry, we have a medical name for this condition.”

Yes said Dahni “humor.”

And I’m particularly sorry Dahni isn’t here tonight – because I wanted to introduce him by saying “Here comes the son” – but sadly that opportunity for a truly bad joke has gone, as has Dahni’s Christmas present from me.

George once said to me “if we’d known we were going to be The Beatles we’d have tried harder.”

What made George special – apart from his being the best guitarist in the Beatles – was what he did with his life after they achieved everything.

He realized that this fame business was – and I’ll use the technical philosophical term here – complete bullshit.

And he turned to find beauty and truth and meaning in life – and more extraordinarily – found it.

This is from his book I Me Mine:

“The things that most people are struggling for is fame or fortune or wealth or position – and really none of that is important because in the end death will take it all away. So you spend your life struggling for something, which is in effect a waste of time… I mean I don’t want to be lying there as I’m dying thinking ‘oh shit I forgot to put the cat out.'”

And he wasn’t. He passed away – here in LA – with beauty and dignity surrounded by people he loved.

Because he had an extraordinary capacity for friendship.

People loved him all over the planet.

George was in fact a moral philosopher: his life was all about a search for truth, and preparing himself for death.

Which is a bit weird for someone in rock and roll. They’re not supposed to be that smart. They’re supposed to be out there looking for Sharon. Not the meaning of life.

Michael Palin said George’s passing was really sad but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.

He was a gardener – he grew beauty in everything he did – in his life, in his music, in his marriage and as a father.

I was on an island somewhere when a man came up to him and said “George Harrison, oh my god, what are you doing here?” – and he said “Well everyone’s got to be somewhere.”

Well alas he isn’t here. But we are. And that’s the point. This isn’t for him. This is for us, because we want to honor him. We want to remember him, we want to say Thanks George for being. And we really miss you. So lets take a look at some of the places he got to in his life.

Video montage is shown of George Harrison’s life, from youthful Beatle to mature solo artist.

Well he’s still not here. But we do have someone very special who was very dear to him – who is here. The first man to perform with the Beatles. The one and only Billy Preston.

Billy Preston and a chorus of vocalists sing Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”

Thank you Billy Preston.

So this is the big drag about posthumous awards: there’s no one to give ’em to.

So I’m gonna keep this and put it next to the one I got last year. No, I’m going to give it to the love of his life, his dark sweet lady, dear wonderful Olivia Harrison, who is with us here tonight. Liv, you truly know what it is to be without him.

Thank you Hollywood Bowl you do good to honor him. Goodnight.

Dying Large

5 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: eulogy, funeral customs, Humour

Very nice piece here by Wendy Dennis in the Huffington Post.

I must have crossed some kind of age threshold, because when I go to funerals lately, I start thinking about my own. It’s not the dying part that scares me. It’s the numbers I’ll draw for the service. I’m in the sanctuary and the place is packed and some relative is at the podium going on about how wonderful the dead person was and how much they gave to the UJA, and I start taking a head count and doing the math and the minute the funeral is over, I call up my daughter and tell her that when my time comes, she has to hire extras.

She hates when I talk like that, but I don’t think you can be too careful about the optics of your own demise. For instance, if I die in a horrible accident, I want my handlers to know that they are not, under any circumstances, to let anyone mark the spot with teddy bears or carnations, tell my loved ones that I’m “in a better place”, hold a “life-affirming” remembrance for me, or deliver one of those treacly eulogies that make people wonder if they’ve walked into the wrong chapel.

There ought to be a law against delivering a crappy eulogy. I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve sat through wishing that the Law and Order crew would burst into the sanctuary, handcuff the offenders, and read them their rights — especially the one about their right to remain silent. When someone is charged with the responsibility of delivering the last words that will ever be spoken about another human being, I think they have a moral obligation not to mention their meatball recipe.

More here. Well worth it.