Birds and Singing

Birds and Singing

Yesterday was the day of my mum’s funeral. If a day like that can ever be, it was a nice day. We held it together, were supported by friends, family and birds.

I found that I was strangely comforted by the rhythm and pattern of the religion. The vicar gave a wonderful address about love and quoted the Bible and Larkin (Phillip not Pop) and even if he refused my offer to come back for a curled up sandwich, he is a very nice man.

In the last few months, the whole religion thing has been a bit of a challenge. At school I have quietly mumbled my own slightly sweary version of Amen at the end of prayers. It’s funny how, even when you think you might be an atheist, you still ask God to send a sign.  

“I know you are a total bastard all-powerful being who could do something about human suffering but doesn’t,” I ranted when I was worried about a concert, “But the least you could do is send me a trumpet player.”  Two days later, a new member of the orchestra turned up without warning: a lovely little girl carrying a cornet in a big blue box. My sister, in a low moment walking the dog, also hoped for a sign. “A feather. No, not a feather, there are feathers everywhere. Feathers just mean dead birds. Live birds would be better.” And a robin appeared on the hedge, sang and followed her back down the lane, popping into the garden every day for peanuts and lemon drizzle cake.

After Mum died, the Robin disappeared for a while.  I looked for geese (as Mum loved geese) and my sister fretted about the baby blue tits (nature is a bitch).

As we were preparing for the funeral the robin came back. He sat with us and chatted. He had a lot to say. It’s just a shame we don’t speak Robin.

Mum was buried in the woodland area of the cemetery, everyone threw a flower in and the birds sang. 

We are a family that loves singing. Mum loved opera and Etta James, and we filled the church with music. We sang Jerusalem and Amazing Grace. 

After the service I bravely hugged and waited to accept condolences but all anyone could talk about was the organist.

“Please tell me that there’s going to be a blog about the organist?” They asked.

“Your Mum would have loved the organist.”

“I properly lost it about the organist”

I wasn’t as surprised as everyone else. The vicar had warned me, without actually warning me. 

The organ is a fiendishly difficult instrument to play and the church has a very good organist, who, according to the vicar was ‘unfortunately on holiday.’

The poor lady who had agreed to step in was clearly very nervous. There was a hesitancy to her playing that led us to be unsure of when to start singing but Jerusalem quietly passed without incident. Amazing Grace, however, was a different story. It was almost as though she had never heard the tune and found it impossible to pick the melody out from the ornamentation in the third line. People looked at each other, some laughed. The less determined gave up. I could hear my Dad’s brother helpfully belting it out. (You can take the boy out of the choir but the choirboy remains). Her timing was shocking too. At first we tried to follow her but by the last verse we finished first. 

By the end of the evening we were cheering up our Aunt with a singalong, properly channelling Mum, who taught us everything we know about singing confidently, loudly and hilariously out of tune. The robin, full of salted peanuts and Twiglets, joined us, singing his little heart out and as the last guests left the geese were going nuts in squawking song. 

“Listen to those geese.” I said to my sister. “And did you hear the robin? It’s been like a sign.”

“Yep, it’s all about the birds and the singing,” she confirmed.