Saturday, May 03, 2003
All right our kid?
Just back from visiting my parents for a few days and Nan's funeral yesterday. Yep, that was fun. I had no idea she hated us, but the first hymn we had to sing was 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'. All five verses. The chorus five times. Do you have any idea exactly how inane the song is? And if you're a Monty Python fan you'll of course be unable to avoid thinking of this song and then have to fight the urge to giggle at a funeral.
As when my grandfather died some five or six years ago, I'm a bit perturbed by my lack of feeling about my Nan's death. The fact that I stayed dry-eyed throughout the whole affair while my sister pretty much started crying as soon as we entered the chapel and didn't stop until about ten minutes after we left is a temperament thing. The fact that I don't feel any particular sense of loss, though I loved my Nan, is a bit more unsettling. Because it then leads on to uncomfortable thoughts about what would my reaction be if someone really close to me died, like one or both of my parents. Or is this just post-Di culture telling me that if I'm not wailing and tearing my clothes that there's something wrong with me? Is my lack of emotion just as natural as my sister's outpouring of grief?
But the whole subject of hymns did make me wish Nan was alive again because the one thing I wanted to talk about but never really did was her Christian faith, because despite her work with the church and her involvement in a healing ministry in Catford in the second half of the last century, the impression I tended to get was that her faith was not one that had been examined too deeply. Certainly she never tried to argue on faith issues with any of her children or grandchildren, it didn't seem to be out of any particular respect for our beliefs when I announced my atheism she just said that I'd realise the truth when I was older. I know she nearly turned my grandfather's marriage proposal down because she wanted to be a missionary, she gave in only due to persuasion from practically everyone on either side of the family. But the picture I have of her was a woman that had faith only because it didn't occur to her not to have faith. Which seems deeply unsatisfactory to me.
Just back from visiting my parents for a few days and Nan's funeral yesterday. Yep, that was fun. I had no idea she hated us, but the first hymn we had to sing was 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'. All five verses. The chorus five times. Do you have any idea exactly how inane the song is? And if you're a Monty Python fan you'll of course be unable to avoid thinking of this song and then have to fight the urge to giggle at a funeral.
As when my grandfather died some five or six years ago, I'm a bit perturbed by my lack of feeling about my Nan's death. The fact that I stayed dry-eyed throughout the whole affair while my sister pretty much started crying as soon as we entered the chapel and didn't stop until about ten minutes after we left is a temperament thing. The fact that I don't feel any particular sense of loss, though I loved my Nan, is a bit more unsettling. Because it then leads on to uncomfortable thoughts about what would my reaction be if someone really close to me died, like one or both of my parents. Or is this just post-Di culture telling me that if I'm not wailing and tearing my clothes that there's something wrong with me? Is my lack of emotion just as natural as my sister's outpouring of grief?
But the whole subject of hymns did make me wish Nan was alive again because the one thing I wanted to talk about but never really did was her Christian faith, because despite her work with the church and her involvement in a healing ministry in Catford in the second half of the last century, the impression I tended to get was that her faith was not one that had been examined too deeply. Certainly she never tried to argue on faith issues with any of her children or grandchildren, it didn't seem to be out of any particular respect for our beliefs when I announced my atheism she just said that I'd realise the truth when I was older. I know she nearly turned my grandfather's marriage proposal down because she wanted to be a missionary, she gave in only due to persuasion from practically everyone on either side of the family. But the picture I have of her was a woman that had faith only because it didn't occur to her not to have faith. Which seems deeply unsatisfactory to me.
