Low Life | 14 March 2009

I thought no one else was going to turn up at the crematorium to wave Terry off. But as the seconds ticked closer to the appointed time, knots of ashen-faced mourners began to trickle in from the car park and congregate around the chapel doors. Then Terry arrived. He arrived in a cardboard box inside a wickerwork casket laid longitudinally in the back of the hearse. He’d been dead nearly a month. Lung cancer. Diagnosed ten days before he died. He was cleaning windows right to the end. Today would have been his 65th birthday.

Terry’s three brothers hoisted him in through the doors and the rest of us trooped in behind. The interior of the chapel disappointed me. Earlier, the ‘Civic Funerary Celebrant’ had told me that he didn’t really ‘do’ prayers. So I was looking forward to seeing what consolation, if any, our secular-minded state was prepared to sanction instead of the heavenly banquet and life eternal.