h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm well that long weekend of personal injury and strange contrasts, which ended well.

Things got off to an inauspicious start when in a bid to rid myself of the green gunge, I nipped down to Tescos for some emergency decongestants, putt my hand in my pocket and removed a chunk of skin from my index finger which persisted in bleeding everywhere and hurting like a demon.

Matters hardly improved as I hurried up to get into the car, inattentively failed to fully raise up my right leg, clipped the doorframe and fell face first smack onto the front step. From the perspective of 2 inches off the floor as I exacted my face from the tiles and doing a quick sense check to make sure everything was still attached and functioning and discovering to my alarm and amusement that I had hilariously twisted my ankle.

3-days away including New Years and a funeral, necessitates several changes of clothes and a small carrying case, which is fine when there are 5 of your going down fitting all of that and 5 fully grown adult humans into the car as well is a bit of a stretch. And so it was in this environment twisted and bleeding, as I already was that I sustained my head injury.

The sequence of events was like this, I opened the door to get out at the services station, forgot I was still plugged in, and so jerked, this caused my water bottle tucked into the side of my satchel that was perched on my knees to fall out of the car, I pushed open the car door to retrieve it, the blasted thing is on a spring, so as I leaned forward out of the car the door closed on my head.

That stung.

This was the last of the personal injuries to come, there is one more but it wasn't mine this time...

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Nan gets deposited with my uncle, we learn the happy news my cousin is being promoted (well done Jo!!!!!), then dash pel mel 20 minutes down the way to the leafier suburb of my other family's digs.

Meeting and Greetings are made (Eldest cousin Anne is now engaged to Keith, and eldest cousin of Dad's youngest sister Emma is going out with Nick, both of whom appear with their respective cuddle-buddies)
The Irish contingent in the shape and sound of Rosemary is already in residence, and is found in vigorous monologue featuring an energetic retelling of the genealogies of the various families going back several centuries to my Aunt Geraldine ('Gerry' to Nick, we learn) and mother to Emma (and if your eyes are already rolling at the who's-who of tangled relationships I've just indulged in, then take my word for it, we had nothing on Rosemary. "Gerry" meanwhile sits attentive facing full on the machine gun like stream of historical nuggets from the cushion opposite occasionally interjecting with a surname of her research whereupon Rosemary remarks on whom they were related to as well. Rosemary's loose take on linearity in conversation (she's never really had need of it) will feature again later. I leave as conversation tips into 5th cousins and great-great-great-great-great aunts of somebody-or-other.

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Time for the funeral mass.

Dive into something smart, and everybody jumps into the various cars and drives the 5 minutes distance to the chapel round the corner (this was necessary because it was a) freezing cold) and b) good practice for the funeral procession tomorrow.


Am struck not for the first time at the surreal nature of indecipherable rituals that are in my instance entirely unpractised. You might on reflection consider this a good thing but it made for a spot of discomfort especially when at nods and winks to the priest the catholic faithful erupt into chants of memorised replies. The reverential bowing in prayer and repetitions of liturgies was a precursor of the main event. I am reminded of why I never got on with churches for it seems everyone was privy to the big secret about to what was supposed to happen except me. It's a feeling I've never quite lost. Did my best to keep my atheistic urges and contempt for the Holy See to a camouflaged minimum but I drew the line at thanking god for anything or genuflecting. I was saying goodbye to Nanna.

Got my first surprise, pallbearers brought in the coffin and set it at the foot of the altar. I'd kind of assumed that was only for the funeral.

Doused in holy water and adorned with crosses and gospels - the point was rammed home repeatedly god had called his sister May home. If you believe in the sort of thing.

However I was in the company of those who do, so there was a lot of family upset.

Speaking to Dad afterwards (who I've been keeping an eye on because he seems curiously relaxed about it all. He surprised me with just how calm his reasoning was. He saw her death truly as an end to her suffering and that was all, in a way that really was relief. I'll take his word on that as he saw her on the Monday, as she died Thursday / Early Friday, that hen he'd seen her last she wasn't aware of who was there or what was going on, basically asleep but seemed in some periodic discomfort which was being eased (as her organs began to fail); it was a slow and inevitable end that ended, and in that sense that she was dying for so long and finally died wasn't terrible. And I agree with him about that. It's like I'm sad but not upset. But then it's not *my* mum.

Dad was set to read the eulogy at the funeral proper; I wondered how he'd cope.

Coffin stayed in the church overnight, we all traipse back home and the now assembled horde of 17 strong relatives clustered around the edges of the living room begin the tried and tested method of banter and booze. New inductees Kevin and Nick said afterwards the way everyone sparked off each other was a sight to behold. 'Gerry' gets the biggest laugh of the night for her inability to correctly annunciate the board games-title "articulate", repeatedly referring to "Actifed" which by common acclaim is agreed sounds like a cold remedy (and probably is).

In spite of needing sleep, didn't. Read Dilbert comics by the light of my mobile phone at 4am, instead.


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The funeral

As it's New Years Eve, we are apparently lucky to have gotten the hearse and the one car for the service; everyone else suited and booted piles into the assorted family cars.

The church is decently full, as friends and so on fill the pews to see her off.

Yet more indecipherable ritual according to an invisible script. Helpfully the bits we are supposed to reply to were written down, it's still odd when two thirds of those attending act like the demon headmaster is leading proceedings. Then again I suppose that is sort of the point what would be the point of the club if it weren't exclusive.

I do my bit for Nanna - a reading of the 22nd psalm - laid my hand on her coffin as I pass. My talent for standing up and reading stuff out saves me once more. Everyone thinks I did really well.

Am a little annoyed at the way the funeral meanders from topics of Nanna's salvation in an afterlife, to how we mournful sinners must too also pray for her and for ourselves (and for the saints and the pope).

If the religious aspect was already leaving me cold, things reach a personal nadir for me when the priest voices the opinion that life is a meaningless joke unless we surrender our good sense and reason and wholesale start believing in miracles and mystery.

I resist successfully the urge to leave in disgust.

Dad's eulogy was easily the best part of the entirely thing, memories cribbed from various family members, which painted a picture of the person Nanna was, who was kind, motherly, gracious and accepting and surrounded by friends and family both when she was living and again now that she's dead. It proved the most human part of the entire morning and what an antidote to all the heavy rhetoric about sin and Jesus. I get my standing up and reading stuff out skills from him. He said the script was the hardest thing for him he prefers to free form, so it was tough for him to stick to it. But he did and it lifted the mood by reminded us of the person in the pine box we'd come to see off.

More rituals of bells and incense and water and prayers followed. I presume this is significant to some people but not to me.

There is communion, Catholics are asked to bow and hold out hands, non-Catholics and those forbidden from receiving the sacrament but who wish to receive a blessing are asked to approach with hands folded across the chest. I stay where I am. Dad, who's excommunicated, goes up arms crossed with my mum, the protestant he married that got him excommunicated.

Toughest moment was when the pallbearers arrived to take the coffin away. You realise it's her in there and though the worst be past, this is really it.

Coffin is loaded into the hearse for the short trip to the cemetery, floral tributes are adorned, including a large shamrock in the colours of Ireland. A nice touch.

Travel to the cemetery in the car (my brother Chris drives as he has insurance) Rosemary and Dad's cousin Lisa are in the back, both think the service was beautiful and wonderful.

Rosemary noted mum's receiving the blessing and asks me if she's a Christian scientist or something. Protestants don't exist in the Catholic universe. Rosemary and Lisa agree, funerals are tops, but cremations are just awful. I've not the heart to tell them Dad wants nothing to do with being buried and wants a cremation. Mum (probably confirming herself as some awful heretic) meanwhile wants to donate her body to organ donors or medical research whichever works out best or that Rosemary is in the car with two atheists. I didn't want to shock her.

Funeral procession does a tour of the cemetery (principally this lets the hearse pull out first) but it lets everyone see the Kavannah burial plot, which already contains Cousin Lesley's little girl Mary (named for Nanna) who was miscarried earlier this year.

Everyone assembles at the graveside. Priest says a few more things, dirt is sprinkled, and coffin is lowered. She's being placed on top of her husband, my grandfather Jerry (short for Jeremiah - not unlike his daughter "Gerry") who died when I was just 2. She out-lasted him by nearly three decades.

We'll be back here in the morning but now it's time for a wake and a party.

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Wake is held at a nearby pub.
Food was good, the company great, everyone relaxes after the formal affair of the morning.

It does not pass unnoticed ad with a degree of rye amusement that there is more life in the wake for the dead relative than there is amidst the wedding party upstairs, which detachments sent to the toilets inform us is being conducted in virtual silence.

After a while people are departing the hard-core of family (17 last night - 19 tonight) return back to my Aunt's House to see in the New Year. I grab the opportunity for a quick nap, to gain back the sleep I missed out on earlier.

I discover to my delight that a distant relative is also an atheist and was dismayed by the priest's dismissal of life as meaningless. Spend an enjoyable evening discussing with him what rot the bible is. Loads of fun!

Am being plied with alcohol.


I grab my camera and get a load of photos of people having a good time.

Contrary to my expectations, holding the funeral on New Years Eve made for good sense in the end. There was a real demarcation between the suits and mourning of the morning, and the jeans and dresses of the evening, aside from the physical act of getting changed, there was a psychological edge to it, in that this year and all it's troubles was being left behind. All of that was literally past. Tonally it was the perfect antidote. I don't honestly think it could have been bettered.

There was music and conga. Dad and Uncle Barry jousted. Come midnight, the champers was distributed in fluted glasses and a new year toasted in with a refrain drawn from Nanna at her irascible best:

"Urgh - this tastes like poison; I hate New Years."

Party goes on late into the morning until eventfully everyone collapses and the remainder go home.

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The next morning....


The tale of personal injury returns, I am informed of the deep offence I apparently caused in sending photos of Chris's half-marathon earlier this year that included the sacrilegious Protest against The Pope.

I'm not quite sure what has gone wrong (best I can figure it the marathon and the protest are only queued sequentially as that was the order in which they were uploaded to Flickr, so somehow Maura had found a way from the set folder into my photo-stream) but nevertheless I was in the doghouse for that one.

Apologies were made. Obviously the wrong photos had been sent. However it speaks to something how I was sought out when alone to be told this grievance in private and that my role in the funeral - knowing this - was still entertained.


Everyone emerges by about 11, and the remaining champers is converted into bucks fizz and consumed.

Alcoholics go to meetings. We are just drunks.

Later everyone goes back over to the grave. I take my camera with me this time, as I don't know when next I'll be back in Brentwood.

Nanna's grave has now been covered in the flowers from the hearse.

The headstone will need to be altered to include her legend along with Jerry's but that won't be for a while, as apparently the ground has to settle before it can be replaced.

The strangeness of death is apparent once more.

We wrap things up by paying our respects to Lesley and Terry's daughter. It strikes me I'm saying goodbye to a grandparent whom I've always known and a 2nd cousin I never knew.

And with that we left and came home.

2011... here we come....

Additional notes:

The headstone is planned to read: May & Jerry Healy - a loving father greatly missed and a wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother.

The latter veneration being accurate dint by virtue of only a few hours but true nonetheless.

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I met Rosemary again the New Year's morning and experienced the monologue for myself which concerned (I think) her father, where he worked his qualification as a tradesman, his hobbies, his possession of a bicycle, what happened to that bicycle over several decades how it was sold, the musical traditions of Ireland, and how Rosemary had noticed a photograph on the wall of a motorcycle, had located the manager of the pub and asked about it's ownership - and it went on without pausing for breath.

By this point I'd buttered my toast so beat a hasty retreat for the relative sanity of the living room.

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Observation: I lobe my family unconditionally. But they are, all of them, nuts.

lobe = love.

I don't know about your verbal skills, but you write beautifully. It was a riveting account

Happy New Year

Thanks Toybox, I'll just be working on the photos, and the Flickr link will appear here shortly...

protest the pope photos in the marathon set, sent to a catholic familyyour sub concious is a naughty boy

always a fan of slapstick


conga

what a way to go

that should have been

conga

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