Dirt Nap

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I did a quick stocktake and I am absolutely in the age bracket where I attend more funerals than I do weddings.

This is not ideal as there is no such thing as a wonderful funeral, but nonetheless something that is inevitable as we begin to pay the price for careless and ill-considered life choices we made in decades gone by.

I often wonder how on earth I even survived my twenties, now that I think about it. Not being a religious lass, I most certainly did not have God on my side although there must have been someone looking out for me which caused me not to expire on the dancefloor of The Ministry of Sound in Elephant and Castle in 1995.

Amen and Hallelujah indeed.

Funerals by their very nature, are set up to be depressing. Musty, cold church with dreary, watery organ music playing. If the deceased was a popular soul there would be standing room only. Which is annoying. Quite often there is an undercurrent of hostility between family members, which can be interesting if people cannot manage to keep their shit together….

And then there is that very real scenario that you can look around the room, particularly if you are elderly, and wonder… “Who is next?”.

A close relative of mine, who I shall not name because I respect people’s privacy, (clue, she provided the ovum to my existence) has actually given me a list of people. It will be my duty to greet the masses at her funeral before asking “the following people to stand.” Once I have read that list of names, I envisage I shall click my fingers and seemingly out of nowhere, henchmen will appear and drag these unwanted wenches out into the street.

She is very certain who she doesn’t want in attendance. And being the organised lady that she is, a playlist has already been curated with everything from selections from The Phantom of the Opera, a decent representation of the Barbara Streisand back catalogue and a smattering of Lil Bow Wow as a homage to her perchance for a snazzy tracksuit.

Recently I attended a memorial service. Can I just say something quickly about memorial services? They are far more dignified than funerals and can be held at the pub. Plus, the physical bodily vessel has long been disposed of, so you are not sitting there with all your intrusive thoughts staring at a coffin thinking, “I wonder what sort of decay has set in?” and “What happens of those scrawny looking grandkids drop it?”. You know what I mean….

Memorial services are far more focused on the after party because #lessdrama #lessbody #morebooze. With the possibility of loose lips sinking ships and the very real death roulette wheel spinning, the notion of speaking now or forever holding one’s peace, just gets a whole lot realer.

Which is probably, while sitting with my gang of many sisters, the story was bought up about how about 35 years ago Mum was on the golf course with a fellow present guest who decided that, as Mum swung back, that was the perfect moment to tell her that my older sister, who was a teenager at the time, was having proper grown up carnal knowledge with someone that might not have been considered suitable, and what did she think about that?

Editors Note : these women are baby boomers, and this sort of thing was a bit of a big deal at the time.

I believe Mum didn’t make the shot, although the absolute glee on her face when she ratted out her old chum for being a gossipy old mole more than made up for it. Said friend handled it absolutely perfectly in pretending she had no idea what she was talking about….

BUT she couldn’t get out of it, because this story was family folk lore by now having been told and re-told and embellished dozens of times over.

The lady then had to quickly leave because she had a flight to catch.

Sometimes you hear about massive punch on’s at funeral afters, but alas I am yet to experience this although while I have you, I once did something so dreadful, so very inappropriate and going straight to hell-worthy at my beautiful Grandma’s funeral which is killing me not to write but I cannot because it would start a family feud that would make the Manson Clan look like Sunday School Teachers.

And finally, I publicly declare that I ain’t taking no dirt nap please. Cremated, turned into a firework and cannoned up into the night sky while Lil Bow Wow raps the lyrics of Ring of Fire.

Thank you.