We went to Trevor’s funeral today. Me, B, Son & Pauline – C couldn’t make it and John had to stay at home and mind the grandkids they have staying this week.
It was held in a bright new crematorium just outside Dumfries – a light-filled wooden building beside a lake, with a view of fields and forest. There were only two other people there – the couple who run the cat shelter that Trevor did volunteer work at.
Trevor’s mother, we discovered, isn’t dead after all, or even particularly close to dying. She was too frail though for the journey up from Cheshire. We also found out from Pauline a bit more about the days leading up to his death.
Before his cat died, Trevor had kept himself together, making some attempt to control his alcoholism by drinking only canned beer and lager; in a typical alcoholic’s piece of self-deception, he had persuaded himself that beer isn’t really alcohol. After the cat went, he started drinking vodka and wine. Additionally, the week before he died, he had told everyone that he was going to spend a few days in hospital for tests – this was denied by the hospital.
John and Pauline had long kept a close eye on him (Pauline often bought him hot meals) and would have checked his flat if they hadn’t seen him for a day or two; it was because they thought he was in hospital that it was a full three days before they became worried.
Suicide, anyone?
His mother is a devout Christian, and had requested that the service be Christian. Trevor wasn’t in the least bit religious, and I think would have been highly offended, but he was in no position to object. I’m a Pagan, but I’m happy to sit quietly and respectfully through the service of any other religion – it’s what I’d expect non-Pagans to do at a Pagan ceremony.
The minister started off by running rather quickly through Trevor’s life – he was adopted (another surprise), a successful grammar school student, sociable, a businessman. The less positive aspects of his life – his divorces, his fraud conviction, his womanising, his drinking – were either not mentioned or only lightly touched upon. That took about five minutes. For the next fifteen minutes or more, the minister then then gave us an evangelistic sermon lauding the life, works, death and resurrection of Jesus. By the end, I had to stop myself from standing up and demanding to know who was in the bloody coffin – Trevor or Jesus?
This service was supposed to be all about our friend Trevor – why was the minister so arrogant and frankly rude as to spend most of it talking about his friend Jesus?
I was fuming. Outside, as we all chatted for a few minutes, the minister revealed that he had been converted to Xtianity at a Billy Graham rally. It figured – he had been converted by having this Jesus propaganda stuffed down his throat, so that was the way to get everyone to turn Christian.
Still, that wasn’t enough to stop me from silently saying goodby to a basically decent, terribly flawed friend.