Venting and Funerals without Bodies

Perhaps I should get my rant out of the way first?

I'm dealing with the arrangement of a very elderly gent and right now I want to kick one of his children. This person (known as "that bloody man" in our house) is being vague, evasive, floaty, and has started playing games that I don't want to play.

Yes, I know - he's grieving and not himself.

I'm used to grieving people, I accept that you sometimes have to ask the question many times to get the answer, because they don't have strong concentration, I understand that people display their upset through short-tempered behaviour and (occasional) downright rudeness, I know that people are not at their best when they have been through a dreadful emotional trauma.

But I still want to give this person a very hard slap.

It's the age old problem of them turning the whole thing around to themselves, and moving away from the deceased.

So far I've had to deal with this person's difficult family relationships (I wonder why people fall out with him?), his discussions with his priest (oh, how I wish that that revered individual was conducting the ceremony!), his home improvements and the fact that he seems unable to give a straight answer to a straight question. I don't think that the man's a politician, but it's certainly a career option for him!

This is a person who does an awful lot of talking without saying much, and in terms of information about his dearly departed parent there has been practically nothing.

And now, when I've tried to call at a pre-arranged time, he's not there. It feels to me like he's trying playing power games, but he can play on his own. I am here to support, to write and conduct the best ceremony I can with the information that I'm given (if any), and to be polite and professional when I speak to him.

I am not here to validate his existence. I have enough insecurities of my own to worry about.

Thankfully these people are few. Otherwise, I would have to take up smoking.

Rant over. Thank you for being there.

Funeral without a body.

Also coming up this week, but with people who have been much more forthcoming about info and generally easier to deal with, will be a ceremony without a body. I don't know when the actual funeral is happening, but the lady's family didn't want the "conveyor belt" and "claustrophobic" feel of the local crem and a wooden box, and so they are letting the undertaker deal with the body (I believe that they are going to do something with the ashes, later) and we are holding the funeral ceremony at a separate venue on a separate day.

Part of me is dreading it - these things can be so free and easy ("and who would like to speak now") that it is easy for them to descend into chaos, and so I'm working hard with the chief mourners to make sure we have some kind of structure, however loose it is. Apparently some of the family are a little unsure about it all (understandable, we're going into unfamiliar territory), but if those who knew the lady best feel that it's what she should have wanted, and if it's what they need, for their grieving, then that's what they shall have.

I was discussing it with a colleague, and here we got into interesting territory. "I'm surprised that they don't want to accompany her on her final journey", my colleague said. To most of us, on the secular side, that journey's already been made, and this is just a memorial (for the ceremony) and disposal (for the body). Forgive me, that sounds a bit brutal.

I suppose, in the end, we must all "do right" by our dead. How we define "right" is formed by convention, belief and legal requirements, but is, ultimately a personal decision. It feels an honour to be involved in it.