Funeral Notes

 As we grow older, we inevitably find ourselves attending more and more funerals (I was at one only yesterday, down in Kent), and noticing, perhaps, how much they have changed over the years. I think the first funeral I attended must have been back in the Sixties, for one of my grandmothers, and it was the first and last time I went to pay my respects to the body, duly laid out in its coffin in the undertakers' parlour; that no longer seems to happen, at least in C of E circles. Back in those days, funerals, for those not avowedly atheist, were invariably some version of the Book of Common Prayer's Order for the Burial of the Dead, without eulogies. It must have been a couple of decades later, maybe more, that I first experienced a humanist, or secular, funeral service. Since then it seems to have become the norm, and any kind of Christian service something of a minority taste. The standard funeral now is an individually tailored affair, consisting of  eulogies and (usually secular) music, with pauses for personal reflection, and little else. Such occasions are invariably described as 'a celebration of the life' – which is fine, but isn't there also something to be said for the universal, one-size-fits-all approach of the traditional religious service? It recognises the levelling effect of death,  which makes all people of all social ranks, the righteous and the flawed alike, one in death, each equally a scrap of humanity – a scrap, and a universe! (I seem to be developing Carlylean habits) – a spark of the eternal fire. A secular 'celebration' tends inevitably to recognise only the better elements of the dear departed's character and behaviour, whereas the religious service recognises the whole person, and sends that whole person to join the Great Majority, praying that eternal rest and light perpetual will be their fate. And mercy, by God's grace. No prizes for guessing what kind of funeral service I want, when the time comes (and no, I'm not expecting that to be any time soon).