Born Again Funeral Junkie – a response to growing up atheist

Growing up, I used to think funerals were exotic things that other people’s families had — like a holiday house — something just a bit out of our reach. My family didn’t ‘do’ funerals. We didn’t even ‘do’ death. As for any talk of an afterlife, well, don’t even go there.

When I was seven Mum’s father died. He lived in a country town far from Sydney, so we rarely saw him. My brothers and I were not told of his passing, but I overheard a phone call between Mum and her brother. I could only hear her end of the call. She was worked up, almost shouting that if he wanted to waste money on a funeral, that was on him. Funerals robbed people blind and caused them to become bogged down by grief. No, she would not be there.

And so I absorbed Mum’s most important rule: Avoid Funerals At All Costs.

But there were other rules, as well, that I would gradually learn:

1. Never refer explicitly to the dying process. This period is only known as when Things Are Grim.
2. Do not get Bogged Down by Grief(skipping the funeral is helpful here).
3. Almost every death can be viewed as a Blessing(though not in the biblical sense).

I was a teenager when my other grandfather died, but again, it happened under the radar. My brothers and I were at least informed of his death, but we hadn’t seen him in a while as Things Were Grim. And, of course, it was a Blessing once he was gone (not to a better place, mind you, just gone.) Over the years I’d observe that Mum could turn any death into a Blessing faster than you could call the undertaker.

To my young mind, there was a certain logic to Mum’s argument. Who wanted to become Bogged Down by Grief? Still, I became envious of classmates who got to miss school to attend an elderly relative’s funeral.

Funerals began to hold a fascination for me. It seemed almost dangerous to confront death so closely.

Mum was so determined to avoid funerals that she kept a string of excuses at hand, like a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It might conflict with Bridge (couldn’t let the players down), or Garden Club (she was co-secretary). The upside was that the death was almost certainly a Blessing. Let’s move on.

If Mum suspected a relative might be in decline, she simply stopped contacting them. The last thing she wanted to hear was that Things Were Grim. I only gleaned this as an adult when I asked if I might stay a night at her cousin’s beach shack when I was heading north on holiday.

“Oh… I haven’t spoken to them in quite a while,” said Mum. “I think Janet might be dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, the Christmas cards stopped arriving a few years ago and I don’t think she’d been well.”

“But didn’t you call Uncle Ken?”

“Actually, I think he might be dead too. Anyway, the shack was getting so rundown, you’d be better off staying somewhere else.”

Although I didn’t understand Mum’s head-in-the-sand approach to her relatives who may or may not still be alive, on her core thesis of the evils of funerals, by now I was in lock-step. I bristled when I saw ads for funeral services, but my curiosity remained.

When Ron — my father’s brother — died, Mum was trapped. She knew her sister-in-law, Martha, would accept no excuse for non-attendance. So Mum projected her own desire not to attend onto someone else — my brother, Tim — who lived in Boston. Mum became zealous in her determination to prevent Tim from attending the funeral and tried to recruit my support. As was her habit, she launched into the phone conversation midstream, converging unrelated ideas, but burying the lead, so to speak.

“Lib, don’t forget to ring Jo for her birthday. I just spoke to them and stupid Tim wants to come out for the funeral. You have to stop him.”

“Wait — what funeral?”

“Ron’s. He died early this morning. When Martha rang me, the undertakerhadn’t even arrived yet.”

Even by Mum’s standards, this was a blunt delivery of such news.

“He had pneumonia,” she continued. “Martha thought she could manage, but obviously Things Were Grim. Anyway, it’s not before time. A Blessing, really. But Tim wants to fly out — and with the baby due in eight weeks!”

Despite our upbringing, my brother had failed to absorb Mum’s anti-funeral mantra.

“So, you have to ring Tim. It’s unfair to Jo. What about the pandemic?”

“You’re overreacting.”

“Nonsense. It’s still a pandemic and you get it on the plane. He’s just being irresponsible, and you have to tell him.” Her voice was tight and shrill.

“Mum, I’m not telling him he can’t come to Uncle Ron’s funeral.”

I rang my sister-in-law for her birthday. My brother answered and launched into his plans for the trip. I was often struck by the polar opposites that were my mother and brother. Given any scenario, they had completely opposite but equally passionate feelings on the subject.

“If it’s after next weekend, I can make it,’ said Tim. “I think Martha would get a kick out of it if I came.”

“I think Martha will have other things on her mind,” I said.

“No, I’ve already spoken to her. She’d get a kick out of it.”

“This has only just happened.”

“Yes, she had to get off the phone to let the undertaker in.”

Tim didn’t make it to the funeral. The crematorium managed to squeeze Ron in before Tim could get a flight. There was no escape for Mum or me, though. We provided the chicken sandwiches. The moment the last one was eaten, Mum wanted to get out of there. But I insisted we stay until the end and we did the washing up.

As we drove home, I felt sad for my uncle who had been unwell for years, sad for my aunt, for whom Ron had been her life’s work, and sad for my cousins, none of whom seemed to think his death was a Blessing. And no amount of pronouncement from my mother to the contrary could alter that. My belief system took a bit of a hit.

It was further shaken when my father, who suffered from dementia, died while I was traveling overseas. When my mother rang to tell me, he’d already been dead ten days. There was no funeral, no service, nothing. By the time I got home, my father had been cremated. His ashes were awaiting collection from the crematorium.

Although Mum had simply adhered to her standard playbook, it no longer worked for me. Where there might have been a funeral, there was a gaping hole. I was shocked by the strength of my own response. My initial numbness to the news of Dad’s death had given way to a sense of destabilisation. How could I have been living, oblivious to the fact that my father was not? How could there be no send-off, no acknowledgment of the life he’d led?

Naturally, Mum refused to get Bogged Down by Grief and became busier than ever. I kept hearing it was a Blessing that he was gone. All true. But I was itching for a funeral.

Soon after, the father of an old friend of mine died. The funeral was held in a quaint, stone church not far from my mother’s house. The widow, wearing lilac and big sunglasses, sat surrounded by family. There were friends I hadn’t seen since university. I had the sense I’d slipped into The Big Chill, the 1980s comedy/drama, in which a group of college students reunite at their mutual friend’s funeral.

The eulogy, delivered by my friend, referenced a speech made by her late father in which he’d said to his wife, “Darling, this has been the longest stand-up fight in history, and I’ve loved every minute of it.” Blue Moonplayed, which was apparently “their song” and I began to cry like a baby.

Later, I wanted to thank the family for having it and tell them it was a bloody great funeral. But I refrained. I wondered if you were even allowed to say that about a funeral.

I was on a strange sort of high for a while after that and kept an ear out for funerals to which I might have a vague connection. It became my new thing. I had a dedicated funeral outfit and sometimes even volunteered to bring sandwiches.

None of the subsequent funerals quite lived up to the Big Chill experience.Maybe that first one had given me everything I needed, and my enthusiasm for them soon waned. Still, I got what it was all about.

Mum was not interested in my updated views on funerals. She thought about donating her body to science and left brochures lying around her house. In her view, this would eliminate the possibility of a funeral. But science apparently didn’t want just any dead body. It had to be in some way out of the ordinary (dying of a rare disease was helpful).

Mum died a week short of her 88th birthday, having remained evangelically atheist until the end. When I left the hospital for the last time, dawn was breaking. I headed towards my car but kept walking. A brilliant pink sunrise was spreading across the sky, and I was reminded of the old sailor’s rhyme:

Pink sky at night is a sailor’s delight/ Pink sky in the morning is a sailor’s warning.

I knew we wouldn’t be holding a funeral for Mum.

Instead, we held a morning tea at my house. It was standing room only, filled with people from every stage of Mum’s life from childhood on. Far from the tight-lipped disapproval I was expecting from her friends, I realised they were relieved.

Her Garden Club co-secretary put it best: “I couldn’t bear the thought of going to another funeral.” Then, looking around the joyful gathering she said, “I want one of these. But I’d like to be there for it, so it needs to be before I die.”

Technically, that’s called a party. And I know how much Mum would have loved this one.