Tasteful sendoff

I visit a local cemetary reasonably often. It's a quiet place to take a walk and an open, green break from the constant, sometimes oppressive, presence of buildings in the sprawl of London.

But walking in cemetaries does bring thoughts of death and dying to mind. Most recently, I was reminded of my grandfather's funeral. He was 83 when he died - not bad, you might say. He was taken by prostate cancer - a very treatable illness - but it wasn't discovered until it was very late stage, and he comes from a family where men have tended to live until their late 90s even, so our family was left with a sense that if his death wasn't exactly tragic in the grand scheme of things, we were robbed of maybe a good decade of having him around.

My mother and aunt and his two eldest grandchildren (my cousin and I), went off to the funeral home together to make the final arrangements. I'm afraid we got a bit silly. We laughed and cracked jokes - much to the chagrin of the funeral home manager. He seemed to think that it was his job to stay professional and I suppose he worried that if he did laugh we might take offense. He didn't laugh and he didn't laugh. Our cracks just got funnier - and finally he relented. "I knew B___ pretty well, and I knew he had a good sense of humor, dry it was. So I don't suppose he would mind if I laughed," he told us. No, I don't suppose he would have, though my grandfather would have disapproved of us putting a fellow trying to do his job in a difficult position. But the funeral home guy had his own stock of jokes that he'd clearly felt unable to tell grieving families til we came along. We laughed even harder.

The funeral home guy told us what kind of things people were buried with. One guy asked for a pack of Marlboros to be tucked into his sock and a bottle of Jack wedged between his ankles. I said I wanted that, too. But the funeral home guy pointed out that the way coffins were built, the booze and smokes would be impossible to reach and mimicked trying to reach them over a coffin lid screwed down at chest height. He also said "You know that saying - you can't take it with you? Well, now you can," and slammed shut a locking, concealed drawer in the lid of a coffin.

Of course when it came to our own tastes we had to sort of laugh up our sleeves. People whose tastes you think you know pretty well may have surprising taste in coffins. It's just not something that's often discussed until you're at that difficult moment. And it's too late at that point to say "I can't believe you'd send him off in that!"

The funeral home guy was very interested though in my tale of floral tributes in the UK. They were like nothing he'd ever heard of. Sometimes they spell out names or relationships - MUM, BROTHER, WIFE in chrysanthemums and carnations. They come in all shapes and sizes, and usually commemorate something the deceased enjoyed in life, like liquor or bingo. I like to think that the people who commissioned them have a bit of a sense of whimsy, which I can appreciate. Sometimes, even in the saddest moments it can be good to look at the lighter side.

I've taken a few photos of interesting ones I've seen:


One for the road


What's a four letter word beginning with D?


It's all fun and games til somebody dies


Good hand, shame you folded early.

And then there are the occupational ones... including this one - I presume belonged to a painter:



And in my Flickr account there's even more...