Nicholas Albery
Four weeks before my friend Marcelle died, I asked her: 'just in case I should live longer than you, and in case I should be asked to help with the funeral arrangements, what is it you would like, as I have absolutely no idea?'
'I would like a community service in St Marks Church over the road,' Marcelle replied, 'and a little service with the 90-year-old priest back in my village in France, for my relatives there. Apart from that, I'm not bothered.'
'Do you want undertakers and a posh coffin?'
'No, I want you to organise it ... But I'm not dead yet you know.'
Marcelle died as she lived, with great fortitude. Her husband John and their three children - Pierre, John-David and Marie, all young adults - along with John-David's girlfriend Stephie, had been on duty in a 24-hour rota caring for Marcelle during her last days, and in the event they proved quite capable of organising everything for the funeral too. John-David and Pierre helped the local furniture maker to make a beautiful coffin out of one inch pine, with a cross on top and wooden handles wide enough for webbing to slip through, all covered with a light matt varnish. Pierre went down to the piece of land the family owns in the Cotswolds, and there a handful of friends spent no less than four days hacking with pickaxes through stone and rock to dig a grave - a grave so deep, John remarked, that there would be room for him too in due course.
John-David collected the death certificate (with six copies for banks and institutions) and we noted the fill-in form which you have to return with details of where the burial took place and the date. The Gloucestershire County Council planning department confirmed that there was no need for permission from them, and that they had no concerns about a private land burial so long as no archaeological ruins were to be disturbed.
My friend Nicholas drove his Toyota van with me and the boys on board, to the hospital mortuary to pick up Marcelle's body. We had an undertaker's release form which the hospital nurse had given John-David, and which we had filled in with our own names as the undertakers. The hospital porter had never dealt directly with a family before, so for this special occasion he decided to leave Marcelle's body wrapped like a mummy taped up in their mortuary sheet, and helped us to put the body into the biodegradable body bag which Green Undertakings had sent us, and to lift this unexpectedly heavy weight into the coffin.
Now I was glad that we had six strong bearers. We'd had a rehearsal in church with the empty coffin the evening before, when it had all seemed easy. But now we carefully repositioned the bearers so that they were all paired off in size and were all taking some of the weight.
A local woman had typeset the service sheets without charge, and Instant Print had also kindly printed them for free. And so the requiem mass began. 300 people crowded into the church. We followed the bishop in, with the coffin, and we left it in the centre of the chancel, on a low dais. Everyone had been invited to bring one flower only, which they all came up to place in front of the coffin.
Pierre read a bible extract. John, who is an assistant priest, made a moving address about his wife and his family, urging neighbours not to stop dropping by. The bishop outlined some of Marcelle's good works, forgetting to mention that it was largely thanks to her efforts that the beautiful church we were in had been saved from being turned into a block of flats.
The coffin stayed in the side chapel overnight, and the next day, in the afternoon, a small convoy of cars (which would have displeased car-hating Marcelle) drove to the Cotswolds.
We hauled the coffin up the steep hill, using webbing to lift it. Green Undertakings had run out of proper funeral webbing, but John-David had found furniture webbing in John Lewis department store which worked just as well.
John was both the priest conducting the service and husband for this final gathering, with 50 of us crowded round. He read some prayers and he recalled a touching poem by Vikram Seth:
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hands to left or right,
And emptiness above -
Know that you're not alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
Betsy played some Schubert on her flute, people wept and shared their memories of Marcelle and we sang Blake's Jerusalem from memory ('And did those feet ...'). We followed on from John's words 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...' with the African custom of everybody helping to fill the grave. There was hardly any earth and we were throwing in stones and rocks, which crashed down so hard I feared the coffin would split open.
It was, it is, all very sad. But I think the funeral helped.
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
Book Orders: The Before and After book in which this piece appears is out of print. To order any of the other books that make up the Global Ideas Bank.
To make a comment or to send an update, please e-mail the Global Ideas
Bank at rhino@dial.pipex.com and
please say which web page address you are commenting on.
";
echo $mb_link;
echo "
";
if ( session_is_registered('navigation')) {
echo " Return to Message Board's last display of selected messages";
}
?>