what I didn't say at the funeral

My mum’s funeral was on the 1st June. It was quick and painful.

For May, I was anxious, sleeping poorly, and dreading the event. I had had nightmares about it. Then, on the night of the 31st, I had another dream.

My sister and I were running late to the funeral. We were in my mum’s house getting ready, rushing up and down the stairs to get our clothes. My eldest sister was hysterical down the phone, demanding to know when we planned to arrive. It was one of those ghastly situations where for some reason, your dream self is trapped in a dream house, and the dream time stretches on endlessly and nothing is moving and you panic, because there is somewhere else you must be.

My mum was also absent from the funeral. She was in bed, sleeping. My sister and I continued getting ready as she slept there, at home with us. Eventually, my sister gave up: “We’ll just have to watch the livestream then”. So she took out her phone and we propped it up somewhere, still trying to get ready anyway, hoping we’ll make it for the closing prayers.

The curtains started their journey across the frame, about to close over the coffin. I rushed to my mum’s room to get the iron, and found her upright, awake, and standing on the bed. I froze beside the iron, watching her. She couldn’t see me. Her arms were raised in celebration, as if she had just completed a very long, very torturous marathon. My sister came into the room, phone in hand, to watch. My mum couldn’t see her either. At last, on the phone, the curtains closed over the coffin and the funeral ended. As soon as the curtains rolled shut, my mum burst into tears. But she was happy. She looked jubilant, the happiest I had seen for quite some time. My sister and I stared at her, transfixed, awestruck. At last, we said “well done, mum”. And the dream ended.

I woke up without anxiety. I felt ready for the funeral. The dream was my obsession for that morning. I desperately wanted to talk about it during my poetry reading at the ceremony, but I wasn’t sure if it would land. So I practised on my sisters as we waited for the undertakers to get the car ready. We sat in the parlour of Co-Op Funeralcare, looking rather lovely, and I said “oh yeah I had a dream about mum last night,” and I watched as their expressions slowly decayed from interest, to concern, to uncomfortable, to outright horror. The sister who joined me to proudly watch her dead mother celebrating her life atop a double bed muttered “oh my gosh” and I politely retired my idea to share it in front of a live, grieving audience of mostly strangers. Thinking about it, I think my mum would have been disconcerted too. I’m glad the dream stayed with me.

Unfortunately, only after the ceremony were we told that the chapel didn’t have the right facilities for my mum, and so my sisters and I waited an agonising week to cremate her properly. So on Wednesday 7th, we had another private commitment service. I was the only one to attend. The undertakers played the songs we had chosen for the funeral. I stepped up to the dais and listened to Sacrifice by Elton John beside her. I cried, and then when I was ready, they closed the curtains.

I was grateful for the second ceremony. There were things about my mum’s actual funeral that I was unhappy about.

My mind was preoccupied that day. I was focused on her abusive partner, who gave an embarrassingly weepy performance all morning. I kept thinking about my aunties, who sat behind my sisters and I, both of whom had been uncooperative in the lead up to the day. One of them phoned me to air her frustrations. She wanted me to focus on her. She told me that we may have lost our mum, but she lost her sister. She demanded to know why we had not involved her in her unspecified, and yet extraordinarily specific, way. When I argued my case, reminding her that we had made several requests for help that were poorly received, she told me that her brain was mushy and she was grieving and it’s unfair to ask things of her. The conversation left me frustrated enough that the next day I left church early and walked up and down Catford High Street like a mad woman, like Fritz’s long-lost twin, an imaginary spliff in my hand, just trying to forget about her. In my head, I ordered my mum to come back and sort her sister out. I was in disbelief that my aunty decided we all had time for this, that she had portioned off a part of her day for wallowing self-pity, and then made space in my schedule to share in it.

There were other things, self-conscious things. Knowing that, although the funeral is for the deceased, the focus is on the family, the surviving girls. I felt overly watched. I tried not to cry because I didn’t want to give the onlookers the satisfaction. And as the proceedings went on, I couldn’t help but wonder if people were questioning our song choices, our photos, our poetry readings, or the eulogy that was beautifully crafted by my eldest sister and read on our behalf by the celebrant. All the noise took me out of the day. I just wanted it to be over.

Worryingly I hadn’t accepted her death that morning, and the dream had encouraged me to feel that way. When we left the funeral parlour at Co-Op, the undertakers gave us space to look at the hearse. I stared at the gleaming black limo and the oak coffin inside and the brightly lit flower spray atop it and thought, “it could be anyone in there”. The hearse just looked like every hearse you see when a funeral passes your bus stop. The flowers on top read mum but didn’t specify which one. The whole event was an out of body experience.

Years ago, she bought me a photography book, a beautiful coffee table feature by Philip Toledano called Days With My Father. In it, he documents the final years of his elderly father’s life. His father is a widower who suffers from severe memory loss, and as such, he keeps forgetting that his wife is dead. To aid in their shared grief, Philip tells him that she’s still alive and travelling with the circus, and for most of their time together, the father genuinely believes this. But during quiet moments, Philip catches him staring morosely into space, or sighing by the window, and he realises that those are the times his father remembers his wife is gone.

That’s how it’s been for me. Most days, I act like she’s gone on holiday somewhere, but then I’ll be driving, or doing something at work, or scrolling on my phone, or reading my book, and my heart plummets into my stomach and my skin goes cold and I’m overwhelmed by this inexplicable panic, a force so fierce that I have to stop myself and refocus. That’s when I remember she’s dead. It still doesn’t make sense.

I wish that every grieving person could attend a ceremony like the one I experienced the second time. When Sacrifice ended, I tapped the coffin; two little knocks with my knuckles, and left the chapel. For some reason, it felt like she was in there that time.