My Mum - The Funeral!

My Mum – The Funeral!
The last time I wrote about my Mum was up to the point where she passed away in a Nursing home with my brother by her side and I arrived in time to be there with her at the end. My sister lived up north but in any event she was out of the country at the time.

Anyway, for the funeral, it was decided that the cortège would leave from my brother’s flat in Hornchurch as Mum was to be buried in Upminster. By this time my sister was back in England and she and her Husband and two of her three sons travelled down to Essex. The third son lives in New Zealand so it was not possible for him to be there. However, my two daughters, my Husband, two of my Husband’s sisters and another brother- in –law were there also.

When the time came for the funeral cortège to leave for the cemetery my sister, brother and myself were to go in the one funeral car following the hearse with all the other mourners following in their own cars.

We all left the flat and made our way to the cars and the dignified procession started slowly on its way until someone noticed that one of my sister’s sons was missing. He had got inadvertently locked in my brother’s flat. Word somehow got passed down the line and the hearse skidded to a stop almost shooting the coffin with my poor mother on board into the road. Needless to say the son in question got a severe ticking off from his father but Mum would have been very upset by that especially as she would have found it very funny. I could imagine her saying something like ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Is it not enough that I’m dead that he has to shoot me on to the bleeding road to get me run over as well!?’

Then when we get to the Catholic Church for the service we couldn't help noticing the Priest looked as if he had been at the altar wine which was confirmed to our satisfaction by the way he swayed and slurred his way through the ceremony. However, things passed off quite well and the son who had so recently been in trouble gave a wonderful eulogy which evened things up for him with his father and pleased all the rest of us no end. With the service over we then proceeded to the cemetery for the burial.

On our arrival we were directed to where Mum was to be buried and it was in a row with other recent burials. The Priest started intoning a prayer and we all stood in solemn silence by the open grave until such time as we were required to say our goodbyes by throwing a handful of dirt onto the coffin. All was well until the Priest went to throw his handful of dirt and almost ended up lying beside Mum in the open grave as by this time he was quite unsteady on his legs. Well, all though we didn’t actually see him take a swig it would not have surprised any of us if he had a flask of something alcoholic secreted about his person because he did seem to be getting more and more inebriated.

Anyway, with Mum now safely out of harm’s way, so to speak, we were free to rake through our own thoughts and memories of Mum as we made our way back to my brother’s flat. Before that, however, my Husband had carefully collected all the cards from the flowers and wreaths so that I could write and thank everyone. So, he carefully passed the cards to me but with Mum being in a Residential and then Nursing home I was somewhat surprised to find that so many people had sent flowers and wreaths. Then I noticed that there was not one person’s name on these cards that I recognized.

My Husband stood looking at me expecting gratitude for a job well done. Wrong! The cards he passed to me were from people I had never heard of. They were all complete strangers then we realised what he had done. He had taken all the cards from the wrong grave! Now he didn’t know which card came from what wreath so there he was frantically trying to match up card with wreath and his ingenious method for doing this was to go by looking at the size of the wreath and then allocating a card with the most amount of words on it. In the end, however, he had to admit defeat by leaving the rest of the cards in a sorry little pile by the side of the grave they actually belonged to!

So, even in death, it seemed, Mum was giving us a laugh which might sound callous but it would be very much in keeping with our Mum’s indomitable spirit and well honed sense of humour which had seen her through so many of life’s difficulties and she would not have been upset by any of this and probably would have laughed along with us, her precious children. Though perhaps not if it was our grave that had been robbed!

Probably the most appropriate words I can say about my Mum now that she is no longer with us are that she might be gone but she will never be forgotten as she truly remains...
FOREVER IN OUR THOUGHTS!