We went to Mary’s funeral today. It was a sad affair. Not simply for the loss but, for me, the lack of care. How can officiating vicars be so utterly soulless and display no hint of humanity? I know that most ministers do not know the deceased but can’t they sense the loss either? You expect eulogies at these things, often more generous than genuine, but couldn’t she see the congregation? One or two family members, her entire family, but standing room only because of the wealth of friends and benefactors of Mary’s life. She actually helped people - the homeless, the disaffected, the ill. And they were there as a tribute to her. And yet the vicar did not see it. She simply read words. And I was embarrassed and angry for all she represents and yet failed to deliver. No compassion, no feeling just unemotional, flat, service; just a job. And entirely missing the point.
An all too common problem, though.
A couple of years back, a friend dropped dead while collecting for Oxfam, a side-effect of a heart which always troubled him in both its literal and metaphorical senses.
We went to his funeral, where the priest spoke warmly about how we might like to think of him "riding his bike, which he enjoyed so much." This puzzled us - we hadn't even been aware he owned a bike.
It turned out the only people he'd spoken to had been his mother and brother, from whom our friend had been estranged and not spoken to in over a decade. They, struggling to tell the vicar something of his life, had very little to go on. They'd seen a bike in the hallway of the building he lived in, and so had offered this.
It belonged, we suspect, to someone else in the building.
Posted by: simon | Tuesday, 08 August 2006 at 11:31 AM