Memorial

We have been in Bristol over the last few weeks, having a bit of a break from our routines (I think this may be what is often referred to as "a holiday"), and while we were there we attended a second celebration of the life of my partner's sister, Maggie, who died in 2021 after a sudden, unexpected, and fast-developing illness which, as it happened, had nothing to do with COVID. Why a second celebration, a full year later? Well, because of the restrictions on funeral attendance and public gatherings in force at the time: there had been no real chance for anyone other than a very limited number of family and friends to come together and perform those rituals of mourning and remembrance that we – the highly diverse community of humanists, atheists, agnostics, secular mystics, militant positivists, and the simply irreligious – are still in the process of re-inventing.

Maggie, like my old friend John Wilson who died in 2010, led a surprisingly multi-faceted life, and had many friends from various "communities" who were keen to attend a second memorial, even one held during peak August summer holiday time; at least one person actually cancelled his holiday. I counted around sixty people there, only a handful of them known to me, mainly family or very close friends we had met at the previous ceremonies.

The event was held in a part of Bristol which is a bit off the beaten track, St. Werburghs, because of Maggie's active involvement in the allotments and the City Farm located there. It took place in the Boiling Wells Amphitheatre, an open air space in a corner of land in the shadow of the railway mainline which has been given over to all things green, alternative, and community-led. It actually felt more like entering one of those slightly chaotic but intensively-cultivated hippie enclaves you find in Germany or Holland than anywhere I've experienced in recent decades in England; an impression helped by the unaccustomed blazing sunlight, I expect, not to mention some extraordinary wood-carved architecture nearby in a style situated somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Antoni Gaudí. It's also been a long time since I used a "urinal" consisting of a hay-bale, and I'm pretty sure I've never been at a memorial where the various encomia were regularly interrupted by the thundering passage of a nearby train.

Grief is clearly one of the most problematic human emotions, and I'm happy to say that it's one I have yet to experience, so far, in its full-on manifestation. Good friends, both of my parents, and a full set of elderly relatives have died in recent times, which I found upsetting for a while to varying extents, but which never came close to overturning the balance of my life or my mind, or my ability to function at work or domestically. Others, I know, have different, more tragic stories to tell; grief can take over your life, like a chronic medical condition. It's clear that a certain performative element has been found to be useful in processing grief in most societies, ranging from the quiet closure of the Book of Common Prayer all the way up the scale to ritualised self-harm. In many ways, it has been the primary, primal function of religion: to at least attempt to navigate a safe passage for the living past the confounding finality and inexplicability of death.

The humanist funerals I have attended have generally fallen rather short in this regard. For the purposes of safely sublimating grief, it's not really enough to substitute celebration (usually in the form of happy memories, upbeat readings, and a curated playlist) for a profound and unillusioned engagement with what is, after all, the greatest mystery and some of the most unsettling emotions experienced by humanity. At sixty-eight, I suppose it's not too early to be giving some thought to the sort of send-off one might wish for oneself (chillingly referred to as "disposal" in most will formulations). Although I remember now that – over ten years ago! – I'd already given some though to the matter, especially the tricky business of coming up with a suitable playlist (Funeral Music). Never let it be said, even at my funeral, that I was not forward-looking, and often inclined to find humour in inappropriate places.

Talking of which, I was struck by this passage in a recent review of Katherine Rundell's biography of John Donne, Super-Infinite (on my Kindle, but as yet unread):

But overpraise, or praise with reverb, is very Elizabethan and very, very John Donne, as Rundell shows us. “Compliments,” she writes, “were core currency,” and Donne was loaded. He flung out admirations; he strewed encomia. “Your going away,” he assured one Lady Kingsmill in a letter, “hath made London a dead carcass.” Rundell calls this Donne’s “pleasure in extravagance.” When Elizabeth, the young daughter of Sir Robert Drury, died, Drury (the sort of grandee to whom Donne was always sucking up) commissioned an elegy. And although Donne had never met Elizabeth Drury, he went at it with a vengeance: In two long, slightly bonkers poems, “The First Anniversary” and “The Second Anniversary,” he unfurled the full howling panorama of human existence and almost beatified the deceased girl. “She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou knowest this / Thou knowest how dry a cinder this world is.” It was heavenly hackwork. “If he had written it of the Virgin Mary,” opined Ben Jonson, “it had been something.”
James Parker, "The Unlovable, Irresistible John Donne", The Atlantic, August 16, 2022

"Praise with reverb" might be going a little far – maybe a subtle use of the sustain pedal? – although it's hard to imagine anyone, these days, going to the trouble of commissioning an elegy from some contemporary wordsmith-for-hire, however wealthy. What a blessing that none of us will get to hear what is actually said about us, if anything, or have to listen to the stupid music we had chosen for ourselves and listed in a light-hearted moment, and forgotten all about.