The art of small talk at funerals

On Friday I went to the funeral of a favourite aunty. As with any funeral it was a sad occasion as Aunty Elsie had been very popular and had been very close to my mum and dad (she was my mums sister), they had spent many holidays together throughout the years and she will be missed.

Fortunately I haven’t been to many funerals in my life, but I am aware that as one gets older one becomes more and more acquainted with them, until, at last one becomes the ‘unwitting’ centre of attention!

What distracted me the most yesterday, despite the sadness of the occasion, was the type of small talk that was going on. I think there is scope here to publish a small but important book, entitled something like ‘Small Talk at Funerals – A Guide’ - this is a ‘working title’ of course. But I think it could be a best seller for those of us who can’t think of the right thing to say at funerals.

One of the things about going to family funerals is that you tend to meet other members of your family; aunts, uncles, and cousins, some of whom you might not have seen for about 20 years, so this offers plenty of opportunity for small talk of the nature of, ‘doesn’t time fly’, ‘my you don’t look any different do you’ ‘you’re looking well’, ‘so when was the last time we met? Oh yes at that wedding when we caught you snogging your cousin!

For the casual acquaintance or friend of the deceased, there are the old standby’s, like ‘It’s a beautiful day for it’, or ‘what a lovely spot’ for the graveside of course, ‘wasn’t it a lovely service’ and ‘wasn’t the vicar a lovely man’.

I guess we small talk because we don’t want to state the obvious such as ‘Aunty Elsie is dead and I’ll really miss her and I wished I had gone and seen her more often, even more so as she had been ill and in a Hospice and despite that she still found time to send the children £5 each for Easter!’ and then fall wailing and gnashing on the coffin.

I would much prefer to make small talk that remembers the deceased, but the funeral seems to be the wrong time, as we are all red eyed with tears and snotty nosed with grief. So we make generalised small talk to mask our grief and the fact that we do in fact want to collapse on the floor wailing, like we see people doing the third world. I think a good wail would be more honest than muttering, ‘nice day for it’!

Nice day for it! There’s never going to be a nice day for a funeral, maybe a day with thunder crashing and lightening bolts splitting the heavens, highlighting the fullest range of Gods wrath, would be a good day for a funeral, or maybe Friday was a nice day for it, the sun was shining and the Rape fields in the distance looked like pools of golden light.

God, if you’re reading this (and I know you do), please let your light shine down on Aunty Elsie, lead her into golden pastures, feed her the fatted calf, let her drink ambrosia for eternity and generally show her a good time, if you know what I mean.

Amen!

Today’s blog is dedicated to Aunty Elsie; please remember her in your prayers.