So today was the funeral of Jim Sims (from Leyton) – I am spelling his name just in case any of his children search for him in future and want to know what happened to their father. Funerals aren’t for the dead, but for the living and even though this is my third funeral, they don’t get any easier to attend. The religious symbolism and structure of the proceedings always jars me as an atheist though I impressed myself for remembering the Lord’s Prayer word for word – something we were trained to do by rote as kids. I knew it would come in useful one day.
The service was modest, only five people attending: myself, the Missus, my mother and Jim’s ex-landlady and her son, who had known him for almost as long as we had. I was a little upset that his eldest son didn’t attend (for whatever reason) – we had tried to trace him and passed on messages to his mother, but who knows the whys and wherefores of why people act they way they do? This is why I am posting this, in that anyone who knew of Jim Sims (born in Dunbarton in 1947) can get in touch and I will tell them the story.
It’s hard not to shed a tear, it’s hard not to feel emotions at these things. I am an emotional kind of guy – probably too emotional, feeling too much love, anger, sadness, euphoria – but the church was so cold my nose started running immediately the Vic asked us to bow our heads in quiet contemplations. So there I dabbing my nose like an idiot with my hankie before the waterworks even came on. Pathetic!
I was disappointed that my father-in-law didn’t make up the numbers and disappointed that the few people in the village who said that they’d pay their respects didn’t bother either. But hey, moving to this rat hole has been peppered with bitter disappointment, misery and woe.
Afterwards, the Vic approached me, visibly excited to talk to me. He was enthusiastic about my singular choice of the three tunes played at the service. I had chose Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” for the contemplative part of the service – mainly because I though it was more than suitable, and it was one of Verity’s favourites and because Jim appreciated my own appreciation of all kinds of music. Listening the track and the expanse of blue sky and clouds it projects into your mind’s eye, you can almost imagine the soul (if there is a soul) dancing across the sky ascending to the hereafter. We spoke to the Vic and told them our plans and explained our rationale and how God had sent that car to me for a particular reason.
Then it was done and we came away and retreated to an old faithful for a spot of lunch and a pint.
Of course, the funeral is for the living because it places you at a point in time and makes you question your own mortality and says: “This is it…” We fill our lives with the inconsequential in a desperate attempt to disguise and obscure the true nature of life and death, the thin tightrope between the beating heart, the quicksilver thoughts running through our brains and the cold release of the morticians slab.
I realised that if I dropped dead right now, there would be even fewer people at my funeral – probably just the Missus and my mother. Only the kids and the dog would miss me and the world would carry on without me – my efforts for nought. That’s the brutality and honesty of life.
If only…eh?

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