Repeat After Me

Chapter 61

State government rules ordained that we could only have ten people at my Grandmother's funeral; Mum, Josh and I, my grandmother's neighbor Rita, my older cousins Bree and Nick and Ruby and old family friends, Bob and Elsie, and one lady from the Op Shop where my grandmother had done volunteer work. Mum's sisters weren't allowed to cross the border without going into quarantine for two weeks when they returned, so we live streamed the 'event' for my aunties and cousins who were interstate on Zoom. Dad tuned in from Queensland.

The service was unbearable. The ten of us sat in the chapel, social distanced, on chairs 1.5 metres from each other. We sat feeling very much alone, crying into the masks we were forced to wear, until the masks were soaking wet with tears and snot. A Le Pine Funerals employee stood in the corner filming the service, and I was aware of the back of my head, how my grief was being livestreamed around the country to my aunties and cousins and my dad and to relatives in the UK.

The civil celebrant came across as fake and overly positive, speaking as though we were at a 21st birthday party, rather than a funeral. My grandmother's life was reduced down to a series of short statements, a birth year, name of her parents, what primary school she went to, what high school, the names of the men she worked for, the name of her husband, the name of the couple they used to play cards with, the names of the holiday destinations they visited, the names of her grandchildren, the name of the Op Shop where she volunteered. The celebrant forgot to mention grandmother's beach box and I wondered why mum and her sisters forgot to mention this. The summary of my grandmother's life was ten minutes long, delivered with forced enthusiasm and ad hoc asides from this civil celebrant woman who had never met her.

My mother gave a heartfelt speech about her childhood and her parents. She made sure she named all the important people in Grandmother's life and included statements from her sisters. I admired the way my mother was able to pull herself together, to stand at the pulpit, beside her mother's coffin, and look out at the chapel that could have seated a hundred people, but instead sat ten.

They played a slideshow of black and white photos of my grandmother as a baby and toddler, with her sisters Great Aunt Elizabeth and Great Aunt Peggy, as a school child and finishing high school, these were precious photos mum had found and had scanned. There were photos from her wedding, of her smiling widely and optimistically, in her long white gown, holding a trailing bouquet of flowers. Then there were photos of her as a new mother. One could read in her face, this was the true delight of her life, the golden years of young motherhood. There was a photo of her in a glamorous hat and a photo of her in a day hat. Later, there were photos of her with my cousins, and then with Josh and I, at a Christmas Day, we were wearing silly paper hats, and it made me recall how she always said grace before Christmas dinner, how she would always say 'we think about the people who cannot be here with us today'. And I wondered who would say this next Christmas?

There was technical problems playing 'Somewhere over the rainbow' as her coffin was carried out of the chapel by the funeral parlour's employees. And then we were standing by the car, as the coffin was loaded in, and I've never felt so sad, that in that box was my grandmother, a woman who walked and talked, who gave birth to my mother, who held me as a baby, who was at every Christmas lunch, and every birthday dinner, who was confident, and independent, and full of stories and words of wisdom, who was positive and upbeat, who liked watching 'Dinner for One' every New Years Eve, and singing Viva Las Vegas that time my family had a karaoke night. She was a good lady in a mohogany box, who deserved more than this ending. She'd deserved to have her three daughters and all her grandchildren here.

As they lifted her into the hearse, I cried so loud. My mother drew her arm around me and placed her head on my shoulder. And I gave mum a hug, like we were each other's life support systems, and when I looked up, there was that Le Pine Funerals lady filming us, and I imagined how we looked, broadcast to all the others. And my sadness turned to true despair. There was no more travelling for my grandmother. Her journey was grounded. She'd lived her life and died in a pandemic. Two of her daughters, who she'd raised with love and devotion, watched from their living rooms interstate, crying with their microphones turned off. The funeral sucked. There was no good send off, no celebration of her life, no consoling each other after a guard of honour. She was whisked off quickly by strangers in a funeral car to Springvale Cemetery. A wake was not permitted.