hmmm, not sure I should have written this but...

In a way, its a look at family stuff and some of the complexities and how perceptions can differ. Then again it could just be a load of piffle. You decide:):)

We had agreed to meet at the nursing home where my father, George had spent the last five years of his life following the death of our mother. It just seemed appropriate to do that and the nursing home staff had said that they were happy for that to be the case and they would be delighted for us to come back there after the funeral.

It would only be a small affair, George never had that many friends and the few he did have he had lost contact with years ago. In terms of family there would be myself and my wife, my sister and her husband and their three sons. My father’s younger sister wouldn’t be there because she was flying of to the USA to visit her son who lived in Montana with his American wife and their children. His younger brother Eddy and his wife Sylvia would be attending though.

Based on the size of congregation we decided on just a hearse, no funeral cars, we would all just follow the hearse in our own vehicles and then come back afterwards for a bite and the usual post funereal chat.

I suppose we had never been close as a family, we never fell out but I guess we were never likely to because we never talked either. My dad was of the old school, he worked down the pit when we were young, he came home each week and gave my mum the housekeeping, the rest was his for the horses and the pub. At least that is how I remember it, it was the pub every night for both my mum and dad, my dad because that’s what he did and my mum because she dare do no other because she got a hard time if she didn’t.

Let me say right now that my dad wasn’t a bad man, I know now that he never stood a chance because of his own upbringing but that wasn’t our fault. My sister left home at 16 because she had to get out, she was desperate enough to get pregnant and subsequently married such was the situation. We weren’t abused, we weren’t beaten, we just weren’t anything.

My mother had long term illness in the form of asthma and bronchitis and that made her life pretty hellish sometimes, didn’t stop him drinking though or giving her a hard time if she didn’t feel like it. In the late nineties dad had a heart attack and that signalled the end of life as he knew it, he gave up and that meant my mum spent her days running around trying to get him to eat and simply trying to get him to live which really took it out of her. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2000 but still he wallowed in his own illness not even acknowledging she was ill.

So here we were, we met at the nursing home, said our hello’s and went to the crematorium. A few days prior to the funeral myself and my sister had been to meet the vicar to give him some information about dad, it was this information he used as he delivered a short synopsis of my father’s life as a part of the service.

As he told everyone about my father’s interest in wildlife and how he cherished his grandchildren, I heard my sister begin to sob and I reached for her hand to offer reassurance, she managed to get through the service and we made our way outside to view the floral tributes.

As we reached the outside the tears began to flow from all quarters and I became increasingly bewildered, had I come to the wrong funeral? Who was the man described in the synopsis?

As we waited my aunty Sylvia commented on what a nice quiet man he was. She hadn’t actually seen him for over twenty years and I managed to refrain from spoiling her memories but I didn’t recognise the man she described.

It was like I had wandered in from the road and intruded on the private grief of a group of strangers without knowing who the dead person was. I was bereft of grief because I hadn’t known him, when he was ill I had sympathy for him but no more than would have been afforded to anyone else with the same degree of illness.

I went to see him and take him his cigarettes and magazines every week like a good son should but we never had what could be described as a conversation in the whole 49 years I knew him.

So who was this man everyone was grieving over, I really wish I knew.