Planning a funeral service

is never easy. Even if the person for whom the funeral is being held has left some guidelines it can be hard. If it is a loved family member it can be very difficult indeed. We all know those things.

But yesterday I went to a meeting to plan a funeral for someone who will have very few mourners and in a way that was even more difficult. I was her sister's friend rather than her friend. I was doing it for her sister and her sister has been gone for more than eight years.

I met the funeral director with two people I did not know. They came from the solicitor's office. They had other responsibilities but they had contacted me as "the one person we could find she might have called a friend". 

Was I? I don't know. I did try to keep my promise to her sister that I would watch out for her but if friendship is marked by time spent together then there was very little of that. 

Did I know her? Well yes of course I did in the sense that we would acknowledge each other and exchange more than simply "hello". I knew something about her taste in literature and music, that she liked her pot plants and something about her medical history. At the same time I don't feel I ever really knew her. She was just that sort of person.

I have written the eulogy for P... because there is nobody else to do it. In many ways it was much easier than writing the one for her sister.  

Her sister was a scientist, a physicist. I am most definitely not a scientist. I endured science at school. At university I saw psychology as more of an art than a science. That E... and I should have been such close friends always puzzles me a little. I should surely have been much closer to P...

P... was a reader, particularly the classics. She loved music - classical and opera. I read too. I read a lot but if I am reading to relax then I will perhaps read a "whodunnit" and P... would have read Proust. I normally work in silence. I don't want anything distracting me. P... would have opera playing quietly in the background. She knew a great deal more about plants than I do because she had the only sort of garden possible if you live in a block of units. Hers was composed entirely of pots outside her back door.

The funeral director was saying something about "songs" and I shook my head. He is young and pleasant but it was clear his taste in music did not extend to Richard Strauss and "The four last songs". I had to explain that these last more than two minutes.  I don't particularly care for them but that is not the point. This is about her, not anyone else. 

I know one of her favourite poems - and it happens to be one of mine too. It is "Usk" by TS Eliot and I think perhaps that could be read. It is not very long and how often do people hear poetry these days? 

We worked the way through the paper work and discussed these things. It isn't all up to me. I was there to suggest what might represent her. We talked about flowers for the coffin. I looked at the catalogue from the firm the funeral directors use and shook my head. They were not her style at all. I suggested I talk to a local florist I know instead. P... knew her. She would have far more idea of what was suitable. 

And so, on my way home, I stopped to talk to the florist. She listened and said, "Yes, I know...and thank goodness' it isn't roses with the 14th coming up. We have to charge $10 for each rose at present."

No, we will have something much more to P...'s liking, to her memory.  The flowers won't be big or showy. They will be quiet and as restrained as she was.  We will try to make the whole event that way. It is what she would have wanted.