Afterwards

[desperance]

Lord, but I do dislike religious funerals. I've known them worse than this - at least the priest presiding had known Fiona, and talked to her seriously over a number of years - but even so, the gist of it all is necessarily about God (in whom we do not believe) rather than about the beloved departed (in whom we do emphatically believe, whom we want to be celebrating, etc etc). As witness his witness about her state of grace, which frankly I simply did not recognise...

But hey, never mind. We all do what we have to do, to get through these things. And there were old friends there, many many friends, packing out the church and the town hall after; she had the send-off she deserved, or the best we could do towards it. And afterwards there were pubs - three, I think, in succession - and then home to someone else's house for dinner and more drinking, and so finally home to my own, and these are the days that we simply live through, because it's necessary.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

...which is pretty much what I want myself - a sort of autoceremonial, where the ritual is once-and-once-only, constructed in situ - in other words, you-all make it up as you go along, y'hear? It's always been the way I dealt with the world, and I see no reason to change the habits of a lifetime.

I've always liked Quakers.