It has been the day of the funeral.
The funeral was for Mark’s Aunty Irene, although I suppose with true accuracy she should have been called Second Cousin Irene, having been his father’s cousin, I think, insofar as I have been able to unpick the strings of family relationships and who is related to Trevor, or Malcolm, or Sylvia, or Our Jimmy.
It was a truly astonishing event.
Most funerals I have attended for people in their mid-eighties have been rather subdued affairs, with only a handful of people remaining behind to pay their respects and say He Had A Good Innings.
Today’s funeral not only filled the church, it filled the churchyard outside. There was not even standing room. There was barely room to squeeze in amongst the gravestones. It could not have been more packed if Aunty Irene had been Princess Diana. It was moving, a bit tearful, and rather awe-inspiring.
Rather to my surprise, because of the closeness between Mark’s father and his cousin, we were classed as Immediate Family, and were permitted to walk in the places of honour behind the coffin and sit in the reserved seats at the front. I felt mildly unsure about this, not feeling very entitled, but of course Mark is an Ibbetson, which was an important branch of the family, it appeared, so we processed in together.
I am an Ibbetson as well but milking and shearing do not have their natural rhythms in my bloodstream so I just watched.
It was a truly splendid service, with none of the usual modestly-self-effacing chirping that happens when you ask the aspirational classes to sing hymns. We bellowed our way through Amazing Grace, and a couple of others which I have now forgotten, thanks to the wine at dinner probably. I have got a foghorn singing voice, but the youths behind thoroughly drowned me out.
The family were farmers, as Mark’s family all are, and somehow it was oddly archaic. The church, and then the Institute afterwards, was filled with weatherbeaten people looking slightly ill-at-ease in their funeral suits. There were stoic and solid Young Farmers, about a dozen of them, all of whom vacated halfway through the funeral tea to push somebody’s car out of a muddy field. There were ancient farmers, wrinkled from the sun, stout and twinkling farmers’ wives, and dozens of others of all ages, looking a bit careworn but entirely determined and mildly uncomfortable with a day which was not going to need baler twine for anything at all.
It was like going back into the nineteen seventies, and there was something about the whole gathering which restored my confidence in the world. These were not people who were contemplating variations on their pronouns. These were people who understood engines, and birthing sheds, and who would not hesitate to shoot a dangerous dog. These were people who liked to eat well, and knew what a chaffinch looked like, and when to expect to see cow-parsley appearing in the hedgerows.
I had a little while to myself at the Village Institute tea afterwards, whilst Mark was being sociably told that My Haven’t You Grown, and his mother was taking photographs, and I leaned on the wall and watched with absolute fascination. There were scarred faces and unshaven faces, and a man with the most enormous hands I have ever seen. There were brave faces, and weary faces, and merry faces, and somehow they all belonged together, it was a community of a sort that I have not often seen anywhere.
They are only my family because of being married to Mark, and I am admitted to it in a tolerant sort of way even though I do not provide piles of food on the table at harvest time or sit through the night on sodden fellsides during lambing. I do not usually care about this in the least, but today I felt rather humbled. It was a truly splendid gathering, and if we still have these people in the world then we need not give up hope just yet.
It has been an unexpectedly reassuring day.
The world is a better place than it might seem.
