I had to cover a funeral the other day. They're always such hard things to do. You find yourself choking back tears for someone you never knew. And at some point during the service as you're standing there going "he seems like a really great bloke", you realise you never will.
"Did you know Tim?"
"Yeah, yeah, I met him at his funeral".
But the thing that really intrigues me about funerals is just how little people know about their loved ones and mates.
People get up and read eulogies and say kind words about all different facets of someone's life at a funeral. You get an insight into people out of the context you might otherwise know them in. The bloke who's funeral I covered was a former Olympian and a stockbroker and there were lots of Olympians and stockbrokers there and other people there who did not know this man was also crucial in setting up charities for asbestos diseases and other medical research. That's a 'for instance'.
His sister spoke about their childhood together in glorious, colourful detail. Another aspect many wouldn't have known. The wife and children spoke about the man of their house, now gone. Each giving an insight into private moments.
And I started to realise that when we die, we are just one person plucked from a matrix which exists nowhere but in our own reality and which is dependent entirely on our ongoing existence for its existence. When we die, at our funeral, is likely to be the first and last time so many people connected with us - so many people in our matrix - will be in one place at one time.
It doesn't happen at our weddings or birthday parties... we like to trim lists on those occasions, usually. Invite only.
When you die, if you were a good person, the disparate parts of your life come together. They do so for the first and last time.
So then I also got to thinking: People only know a part of you. They don't know the whole of you. It took eight people talking just to give an insight into the man who's funeral I covered. Every person in the room learned something from each of them and every person in the room had their own story to tell which, if included, would have continued to fill in the picture.
No-one knows you completely.
As my mind does, I started on the morbid and self-obsessed thought process. Who would speak at my funeral, and what would they say? I feel like I've lived a good life, made good and long term friends, contributed to the communities I've lived in, succeeded in my chosen profession... all the things expected of me (forgetting the wife and kids bit, I suppose). But if I died tomorrow, perhaps in my bedroom and surrounded by prescription pills, who would speak for me?
Well bugger that. Lighten the mood, Datchy.
If I die, I would like the following please:
1. A choir. Preferably all black and gospel singing, but a choir will do.
2. I'd like to kick off the service with the Bitter Sweet Symphony as people enter, please... The Verve's version.
3. Don't get in a preacher. If Lionel Yorke is still around I'd like him to conduct the service but I'd like you to tell him my name was Stephanie Trunchbull.
4. I'd like Andrea Gibbs to do a tight five minutes
5. Canapes. There's never enough food at a funeral. Please get shirtless buff guys to serve it.
6. Cremate me, don't bury me. Scatter my ashes over Margaret Duffy's headstone in Trish's backyard.
7. For Godsake don't hold the service at the crematorium. It feels like a fucking drive-thru funeral.
8. As the coffin is taken away, I want the choir to lead the whole congregation in "I Will Survive"... the disco/Gloria Gaynor version.
9. I've pinched this idea from Thom and Trish, but if we could hire some eastern European headslapping babushkas to wail out the front, dressed in black... that would be hot.
10. A door prize. I'm dead fucking serious. I want a door prize. Envelope under the seat job please.
And perhaps with the exception of Margaret Duffy (I'd like my ashes slung-shot into King George Sound please), that really is what I want.
Although I don't expect you'll get the babushkas.
