Stevie's service

The thing about funerals is that you end up visiting someone that's not there and it's usually somebody you wouldnae visit anyway. It's the grown up equivalent of the school disco. The family sits at the front. Everybody else filters into the back rows, filing them up, uneasy at being caught in chapel, and panicking that there might not be enough seats and they'll be pushed into the seats at the front and have to talk to the mourner's family.

I sat on the back seat, of course, nearest the door. The back seats are really the front seats, the ones that allow you to escape back to fresh air normality first. Funerals are like popularity contests. You say things like it was pretty busy, or it'll be really busy tomorrow, as if that is some kind of consolation. Maybe it is.

One of the things that haven't changed since Jesus Christ was crucified is the warbly singer, the one that stood behind the cross hitting the high notes that He might have missed, the ones that don't even need a hymn book. Everybody else tries to edge away, but you don't want to be unChristian about it. But the good thing is that if it wasnae for the warbly singer there wouldn't be anyone else singing. Singing is the equivalent of being caught winching the fat ugly bird at school, the one that no one else winches, but you.

The priest surprised me. I don't mean that he drank goat blood and started saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, I mean he was nice. He explained thing in a way that any nursery group would have been proud.

'You know, this is just a wee prayer for Stevie, because he died.'

He was that nice that we didn't want to hurt his feelings and tell him that we kinda already knew that. His God, he wasnae one of them old fashioned fire and brimstone rot in hell kind of Gods. He was Santa God and I must admit I quite liked him that way.

The service was good. It might even have been interdenominational, whatever that means. There was none of that suddenly standing up, blessing yourself, kneeling down and not belting out hymns. The kind of thing that, in the old days, separated the sheep from the goats and disorientated Proddies visiting mass from the hard core Catholics that usually shunned them. Mr Nice Priest introduced everything as if he was some kind of compare:

'Now we are just going to kneel down, as a symbol or respect'.

When the service was over he went back on format.

'Now we have confessional for those that want to go to communion tomorrow.'

But confession wasn't one of those you need to confess your sins kind of things. You just had to go into the confessional box and say out loud you were sorry. In fact you didn't have to go into the confessional, you could just shout in from outside the box, because God would hear you.

Everybody waits outside the chapel, making arrangements for the next day. You see everybody that you have not seen for years. And, of course, you comment on what you see.
'I never recognized him.'
'He's getting bald'
'Look how grey he is now.'
'She's getting fat!'
'There's Og. Remember when he used to fancy Wilma out of Scooby Doo. And we had to tell him that she was a cartoon character. And he said “I know, but I'd still shag her anyway”.

Then when we were going down the road Gordy phones somebody and the driver hands him his phone to answer, but Gordy doesn't get to it on time and it rings out.
The driver says: 'ya dick you phoned me'.
And Gordy says: 'I thought I recognized the voice'.