That day

We have been to my friend’s funeral.

We have not been home very long, and Mark is being helpful with all of the incomplete domesticity in order that I can write to you.

He is hanging the washing up on the rail on the stairs next to me. I am trying not to interfere but he is doing it very wrongly. The trousers are upside down and everything.

I shall wait until he has gone and then rearrange it all properly.

The funeral seems to have taken up almost the whole day somehow, what with the usual rush of trying to organise respectable clothes, after which we had to drive to Oldham.

Fortunately, respectable clothes for funerals are very easy to arrange, being the same ones every time, ie, black dress, black shoes, black jacket, black tie, etc. The black dress does double duty for going out for enormous and joyful dinners at Christmas, because it is elasticated and has no waistband at all.  It is my favourite garment for all smart occasions, because it can be worn with no detriment to comfort, and because it is sufficiently well-cut for me to keep my vest on underneath without leaving tell-tale ridges.

Mark, alas, was not so fortunate, and was reminded of enormous and joyful dinners as soon as he tried to fasten the buttons at the waistband of his trousers.

It does not matter. He will not need his suit for ages unless somebody else dies, can I ask that you all avoid it until he has done a bit of exercise, please. We will eat salads again once it is springtime.

It was a glorious day for driving down, bright and clear and crisp, and of course nobody drives anywhere any more because of not being allowed parole until after Easter, so the roads were clear, apart from a few thundering trucks. In any case, after regular driving to Gordonstoun to take Oliver to school, going from the Lake District to Oldham seems like a mere nip around the corner.

Despite not actually being very far away, we have been incarcerated for so long that it had the air of a veritable trip abroad. We gazed at our surroundings with fascination, because really Oldham is nothing like the Lake District, and was a splendid adventure. We felt as though we were having a glimpse into a different world, and tried to imagine ourselves into all the different lives we could see pottering contentedly along the rows and rows of red-brick terraces, identical to, and yet worlds apart from, our quiet little lives in our own grey Lakeland slate terrace.

We found the crematorium eventually, because the bossy voice on my telephone and and the signs at the side of the road contradicted one another, and we could not quite agree on which one might be right. In the end we got there with minutes to spare, and my friend had already arrived.

He was being cremated with his husband, who had died a week or two before he did.

They were in two hearses, in rainbow-painted wicker coffins, and I was reminded terribly of their wedding, years and years earlier, when they also arrived side by side, in two pink Rolls Royces.

By an odd chance of fate, the crematorium flowers were in lilac, which was the colour they had chosen for their wedding. They had worn lilac morning suits, which we had all agreed looked as though they had been upholstered from an elderly lady’s sofa.

Their wedding, in those days a civil partnership, had been a wildly joyful extravaganza of flowers and ribbons. Lucy had been booked to be a bridesmaid, but had suffered from a dress-splattering indigestion mishap at the last minute, and so had been hastily withdrawn.

We walked down the aisle at the crematorium with the oddest sensation of wondering which side of the aisle we should sit on, as if we belonged to the bride or the groom, and looked at the two rainbow-painted flower-strewn coffins at the front.

I do not know how you find the right things to say at funerals, on the whole when it is mine it would probably be better not to say anything at all. I did not like the crematorium lady who spoke. This was not her fault, because she did not know my friend or his husband, and it was painfully obvious.

Their two lives were not the merry whirlwind of contented socialising and laughing in immaculate gardens that the lady described. Their lives were scarred by sickness, and depression, and troubles, and bitterness, the way all lives are, and it seemed to me that in ignoring their desperate struggles she missed the essence of the people that they were.

My friend was not a perfect jolly chap.

He was flawed, and sometimes foolish, and sometimes angry. He made bad decisions and flirted with pain and sadness until death claimed him, too young.

He was five days older than me.

And yet he was kind, and tried to find the right thing to do, and gave his all to anybody who asked him for it. He was gentle, and serious, and thoughtful, and clever, and now he is gone. I am both wild with anger at him, and crushed with the loss.

We talked to his brother afterwards, who gave us the photograph, a relic of their long-ago wedding.

I have included it here.

I will remember that day and not this one.

That would be best.