Six weeks after my brother-in-law Sean died, with two post-mortems held plus an inquest opened and adjourned we finally got the go ahead for the funeral. It was Tuesday 10th November 2009 when we got to say our final goodbyes.
Sean was always one for a laugh and a drink and the escapades he got up to were legend. We couldn’t have an ordinary funeral could we? There would be no long slow funeral procession, no piles of flowers on the coffin, no wearing of black and - most definitely - no vicar (unless we could find one that got pissed with Sean down the pub every Friday night!). So I did all the words (the eulogy I guess you’d call it) and we had a wake rather than a funeral. I’d bet that the Chapel at Southend Crematorium had never heard so much laughter!
Choosing the right funeral directors was the first step, it had to be someone who would do exactly what we wanted and we struck gold with T. Cribb & Sons of Leigh-on-Sea with the lovely Sandie doing the arranging and Graham Grimm as the Funeral Director (what a great name for an undertaker!). He was a great bloke, smiling and laughing with the rest of us! Sandie knew from the outset what we wanted and Graham said he just does what Sandie tells him! He got it absolutely right. Mention must also go to Brian who was the Attendant at the Crematorium who I ran everything past the day before and he got all the timing spot on (he also got the bottle of Vodka but we’ll come on to that later).
So we all met at the Crematorium and Sean was already there in his box. There were nine of us altogether. Me and Sandy (his big sister), his mum Pauline, his best mate Mel who had known Sean since school and who flew over from Sicily, his most recent drinking buddy Terry who had known him thirty years, Terry’s lady friend, Sean’s first girlfriend Lolli who he had kept in touch with since they were 17, his last girlfriend Linda who he had been in love with since they were at school together but had only got together with (finally!) about five years ago and his cousin Barry who came down from Edinburgh.
As we walked in we had Queen playing ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ and once we were all seated I gave the nod to Mr Grimm to bring in the coffin. Apparently you normally stand at this point but we wanted to remain seated in case Sean’s 87 year old mum fell over! The coffin was placed on the catafalque and Terry had arranged with the funeral director to have a bottle of Smirnoff and a packet of Hamlets placed on top of the coffin so up those went. Great stuff! The only flowers we had were white roses - one for each of us to place down at the end - but Graham the funeral man asked Sandy if she would like a rose placed on the coffin. We hadn’t thought of that, another great gesture. Queen played on and came to an end and it was time for me to stand up at the front and say the words.
My bits paid tribute to a life lost far too early (the same age as most of us there) and asked everyone to celebrate Sean’s life instead of mourning his death (actually I might post them for posterity). Mine had one or two laughs but it was his mate Mel that brought the house down! He related all the capers they used to get up to and everybody was falling about laughing! Mel has a pregnant donkey back in Sicily and if the baby is a boy he’s going to call him Sean so he can go out back and have a drink with the donkey whenever he misses his old mate Sean! It turned into a wake rather than a funeral which is exactly what me and Sandy wanted and what Sean would have planned for himself.
I said the final goodbyes on behalf of everybody and we played him out with Van Morrison’s ‘Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell’ - a stunning track with the most beautiful of words perfect for a funeral. The curtains closed on the line ‘Close your eyes in fields of wonder’ and we were done. The perfect funeral.
All of us were around Sean’s age except for his mum who is 87 and I have to admit that she was probably a little trepidatious at what I had planned but I told her ‘Trust me, this is what Sean would have wanted’. Once it was all over she thanked me for ‘the most beautiful funeral that was perfect for Sean’. It worked for everybody and it worked exactly as I knew it would.
Some people might not feel it’s right to have a laugh at a funeral but it was our funeral and it was Sean’s funeral. He would have loved it, we all loved it and I don’t give a toss what anyone else might say.
Now all(!) that’s left is to have an inquest and find out who was responsible for taking away, far, far too early, a great bloke who had a few more laughs left in him and who had finally found the love of his life to settle down with. Linda is now all alone, Sandy has lost her little brother and her mum has lost her son. It was not an ordinary death and someone should know what they have done. We’ll do all we can to see that that happens.
