I Love a Funeral

I know this marks me out as even weirder than you thought I was but I love a funeral.

It’s the perfect party for the socially awkward with a death obsession, who finds the conversation of older people to be creatively stimulating. I would never go to a party unless I had a book in my bag but at a wake you can actually read the book and people forgive you because funeral grief makes social anxiety acceptable. It’s the party where everyone feels like I do. They loiter uncomfortably at the edges of the room, finding unfunny things hilarious. They take food because they think they ought, rather than because they are actually hungry or they eat their body weight in crisps and cake because it keeps them busy. They listen surreptitiously to conversations, so they can pretend they know who people are because they aren’t brazen enough to just call everyone “poppet” and be done with it. And if it all gets to much they can nip off to the loo for a quick cry.

I was a little concerned that my first funeral since my parents would be tricky. I’ve often noticed that people can be overly emotional at funerals where they have little connection to the deceased because they are actually grieving for someone else. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to support my friend, which I hope I did even though I welcomed her and her sister into the ‘dead dad club’ with the words, “It’s a shit club to be in but you’ve got to take what you’re given.”

I needn’t have worried about misplaced grief bubbling over because I don’t do that. The closest I get to emotion in public is laughter. I love learning about the person that has died. I like hearing people’s stories of them and feeling the pride they have to have known that person. As the party wears on and people start to talk about other things and old men tease each other about their choice of tie or offer to fight me over whether the cream or the jam goes on the scone first, there is always a feeling of happy ease. This is all people have to think about. It’s the missing loved one or trivialities. No one is stressing about the school play, the 50 emails that haven’t been sent or the looming redundancy. Then at 5.30 all the old people wander off for nap time/pill time/Pointless (not my observation but I’m going to remember it to see if it happens at other funerals) and the party starts to break up. After my Dad’s funeral at this point the party continued at Mum’s house where her friends ate cake and drank Prosecco and at Mum’s the drunks all stayed in the garden until it was very dark singing Oasis songs. I think the after party of a wake is where the immediate relatives can let their hair down and have fun.

It’s the day after a funeral that’s hard. Normal life is meant to continue but in normal life people aren’t openly grieving and you can’t talk about death. The day after my parents funerals I was fit for nothing. It was a day for eating crisps and chocolate and watching The Princess Bride. I was surprised at how awful I felt, especially as people go back to work the day after an important funeral. It’s the day after the funeral that you begin to wonder if it will ever feel real.