I went to a funeral on Friday. If he was looking down from heaven (a long shot, I’d say, for half a dozen different reasons), Frank might have been surprised to see me there. We were only ever ‘friends of friends’. But, hey, at my time of life a funeral is a day out, an opportunity to socialise. The short service, at Rawdon Crematorium, was almost over before I realised it was humanist.
There was no mention of God, or heaven (and even Christians baulk at mentioning ‘the other place’ at a funeral), though the humanist celebrant reminded us that we too would die some day. We were not asked to kneel, or mumble prayers to a taciturn and camera-shy deity. Instead of hymns, or the call-and-response of ancient invocations, we filed out to some raucous blues by George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Despite the sombre nature of the occasion, it felt grown-up. We can handle these occasions ourselves; we no longer need the infantilising delusions – or the contrived euphemisms – of religion.
Licensed today: another useage of the gardens at Great Dixter, Northiam, East Sussex…
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