When we are born it is guaranteed that our mother will be in attendance. These days our father might be there too, although it might be a birth partner or a relative instead. Generally though we arrive into fairly select company.
When we die it's anybody's guess who will be with us. I'd venture that most of us hope it will be quietly in our sleep with our loved one by our side. Certainly few hope for it to be a public spectacle. But death is not the saying goodbye. That is the function of funerals.
At 41 I've still been to surprisingly few funerals. Four close family members and my nanny Jane, nearly ten times as many weddings. Yesterday made it six but what made it notable for me was that I wasn't just attending the funeral I was officiating.
As a consequence of being asked to perform that role I have been giving a lot of thought to funerals. I know that some people plan them meticulously and I know that others are absolutely indifferent to the send off they receive. There are public funerals watched by millions, Princess Diana obviously springs to mind, and there are funerals that go completely unwitnessed referred to, even today, as paupers' funerals.
In my view a funeral is an extremely important occasion, much more so than a wedding, but like weddings they can be overwhelmed by folderol and frippery, completely at odds with the person whose life is being celebrated. Rituals are the punctuation of life, a public recognition that a new life has begun or that a life lived has ended. Without funerals we miss a chance to take pause for thought and make proper acknowledgment of the lives and deaths of others; we fail to accord to people the respect that every human life deserves.
I have lived near a cafe for a while now owned by two magnificent men. This cafe, as well as serving absolutely ace coffee, is the lifeblood of the community. Out-of-towners tend to suppose that London is incapable of a sense of community but anyone who has lived in London for any time will know that London is an amalgamation of villages. That said, community does not arise from sheer proximity to others. Community is not just about place it's about people too.
If you head direct from home to work and back again, indifferent to the existence of those living around you, community will not come to you and you to it. People can be slow to engage with those around them through shyness, exhaustion or suspicion. Sometimes it takes somebody to take a lead and show the way.
This coffee shop organises a street party most summers, and this isn't a curling sandwiches and a few tins of beer affair, but first rate entertainment performed from a vintage Dreamliner caravan and delicious food stalls. Carols outside the cafe at Christmas. Rotating displays of art on the walls. Interest in the lives of their customers, a place to belong and make friends. And a place, in particular, for Sylvia whose funeral it was.
I did not know Sylvia well and my connection to her was the same as it was for everyone that attended her funeral: the coffee shop. Without it, and in particular without Matt and Nick who make it what it is, I don't like to think too much about what her funeral might have been and what, no doubt, many funerals are. But organising a funeral wasn't just a one off act of benevolence on their part, they embraced Sylvia in her last years ensuring that she unequivocally had a community to be part of. What she gave in response was character and a zest for life that would put many decades her junior to shame. When you value people they value you right back.
If you'd told Sylvia that I would be MC'ing her funeral she'd probably have asked who the hell I was but for me it was one of the honours of my life.
Look about you and see what your community is and if you can't see one take a leaf out of Matt and Nick's book.
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