Stanley's funeral

It had only taken four months for Stanley to die once they’d found the brain tumour. After the initial scans, the doctors had given him twelve weeks and had said even for that he’d need invasive treatment. Stanley refused it all point blank. He said if he was going to go, he would do it in his own way. George explained all this to me in a tired and deadpan voice, which I guessed was the result of him having to repeat the same sad news over and over again.

A friend had told me Stanley was ill, and I’d phoned George the minute I heard, but it was too late by then to talk to Stanley himself. They’d had just enough time to take him on a whirlwind trip around all the places he’d been happiest. I remember George listing them to me – the art galleries in London, the museums, the seaside, a trip down the Thames – and then he’d rapidly gone downhill, losing one sense after another, until finally he’d been admitted to hospital, and then the hospice, where his whole family had kept a vigil until he had died.

I knew the ceremony was going to be something special. George had told me Stanley had spent a whole day with the man from the humanist society, telling him exactly what he wanted. When our invitation arrived it was decorated with rainbows and clouds and butterflies, and above the clouds there was a large picture of Stanley’s face beaming out. He was wearing his black beret and his gold-rimmed spectacles shone as brightly as his benevolent smile. With his beard, now completely white, he looked like a combination of Father Christmas and the illustrations they have of God in children’s literature.

The funeral was fascinating; it was at the crematorium just outside the town we had moved to the year before. It was the odd mixture of Suffolk meets 1960s gangland that made it so interesting. There were hundreds of people there. As well as having a large family, Stanley had been a very popular man.

Into the bright sunshine of the crematorium car park the villagers trickled in small groups after their eighteen-mile drive. It was quite a big village, and most of them came to pay their respects. Stanley had been there for decades and he’d been a very important member of the community. It was funny watching as they merged with the Londoners who all seemed to have arrived before. You could pick them out because they were wearing cooler sunglasses, and their tailoring was sharper.

Almost all the men there looked uncomfortable dressed in their black suits. There were so many of them it was like walking into a black and white photograph. Tattoos peeked over the tops of the white shirt collars - it seemed as if there was an unwritten rule that they had to be at least two inches too tight for their thick muscular necks.

Shaved heads, a few pony tails, wraparound sunglasses, some with big gold designer monograms on the sides, a fair sprinkling of earrings; they all held their cigarettes the wrong way around in their hands, the lit tips facing into their palms, just like Stanley had done. As the younger men walked by, great clouds of expensive smelling aftershave wafted across from them, the sun reflecting off their hair gel.

After a while, the family cars arrived and I went and hugged George. I watched the coffin as it was taken out of the hearse. It had bits if paper stuck all over it. Stanley had said he’d wanted all the children he knew to bring along drawings. Someone had also sellotaped on a few pieces of plastic cut off carrier bags from Tesco, which said “value added” in big blue letters. I thought that was the loveliest tribute of all. They weren’t very well fixed on, and they fluttered in the summer breeze as Stanley’s sons lifted the coffin to carry it into the building.

Even though it was only a couple of years ago I can’t remember much of what was said. There were quite a few speeches, all delivered with a quiet dignity. I don’t think any of those who spoke had ever done so in public before, except perhaps at court, when the judge had asked if they had anything they wanted to say before sentencing. Some of them read haltingly, from crumpled pieces of paper; some spoke without notes. They talked about Stanley’s beginnings, in wartime London, and his gentle humour, and the respect and love he’d earned since his move to Suffolk.

From where I was sitting I could see Stanley’s mother, a tiny little woman, perched on a seat in the front row, between two of her big sons. I thought how sad it must be, even at that age, to watch your son’s funeral. I know the music was good. I think they played Louis Armstrong’s “what a wonderful world” as he went off on the conveyor belt towards the curtain. I couldn’t think of a better song for Stanley to end with.