For the living there is much pleasure to be derived from surveying a person’s life when the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and their work is done. Dead, in other words.
Works in progress – biographies of the living – just don’t cut it.
Death focuses the mind on existential matters. The human mind abhors cosmic chaos and seeks to make sense of it. Considering the immensity of the universe and the littleness of a brain, you could call that either intellectual bravado or heroic defiance. Up here in the Midlands a dying man recently designed elements of his funeral and had the words ‘What was that all about?’ inscribed on the cover of the service sheets. Brilliant. Unsettling.
The living respond to a death with versions of the life story which draw threads together, discern patterns, make connections, explain anomalies and draw conclusions. Most of us feel our lives to be somewhat of a muddle. Fear not. Just as our deathbeds will be smoothed and tidied when we’re gone, so will our lives be, also.
Which is why we love to read obituaries in the newspapers. In the broadsheets, they follow the same format. First, the life is summed up in a single sentence:
Scholar of Latin literature with an extraordinary gift for communicating his enthusiasm for his subject
Chindit veteran who led an exhausted company of Gurkhas in a victory against a far larger enemy force
Offbeat actor and poet who played a fragile Tarzan in an Andy Warhol movie
Poet and pacifist admired for his translations of Rimbaud and Apollinaire and a leading figure in Soho’s artistic scene in the 1960s
Then follows a paragraph or two containing an illustrative anecdote which epitomises the dead person. Sometimes, a photograph serves this purpose better.
Taylor Mead’s bottom was a legend in the film world. The 1964 film ‘Taylor Mead’s Ass’ was simply footage of his naked buttocks, for over an hour, recorded for posterity by Andy Warhol.
John Lucas could claim, although he seldom did, that he had returned from death or at least from pretty close to it. Contracting sandfly fever in deep jungle during the second Chindit operation, he had to be abandoned with a full water-bottle and his revolver. Miraculously, he came round after two days and managed to catch up his column and continue on the line of march.
One day in 2007 David West went by train from Corbridge in Northumberland to Sanquhar in Dumfriesshire, carrying a long axe for use in a friend’s garden. He put it in the rack. At Carlisle he found himself surrounded by railway police. “Offensive weapon, officer? Let me show you: there is no room here to swing an axe . . .” This event prevented his journey to Sanquhar, but displayed his enthusiasm for explaining what he regarded as obvious even when prejudice or fashion might see things differently.
There then follows a chronological account of the person’s life. The account of famous person’s life seeks to tell the whole story, secrets and all, sex secrets especially. The narrative is shaped by the author’s verdict, which is normally foregone. It is this subjective element that belies the author’s protestations of of objectivity, and accounts for the great number of disparate biographies of famous people. Mrs Thatcher has already spawned half a dozen, pro and con.
The life stories of ordinary folk like us as told in funeral eulogies are altogether different. The element of verdict — whether we were a Good Thing or a Bad Thing — is diminished. As is the shock-horror revelatory element. The prevailing element, as in biographies of the famous, is the analysis of what made us tick. That’s what everyone wants greedily to know – or have affirmed.
When all is said and done, we will, when we are dead, as we do while we are still living, mean different things to different people. We each spawn a bunch of differing life stories according to how we affect people.
The version offered at our funeral will be very much the authorised version, the official biography, because it will be a narrative created exclusively for the front row. There will likely be plenty of soft focus. There may also be any number of edits. In the matter of our faults, there is likely to be explanation and absolution. Not quite a pack of lies — but a long way from the whole truth. Closer, actually, to myth-making. But that’s okay, because the mood at a funeral is normally magnanimous.
The creation of a pen portrait of a dead person by a celebrant is the outcome of a negotiation with the immediate family, and of family members with each other. The edits are determined by consensus. Some families will go for a warts and all approach. Others will require the warts to receive expert cosmetic treatment. The resulting depiction, if it’s the work of good wordsmith who speaks well, is likely to be regarded as quite as marvellous and valuable as a portrait in oils. If it plonks the dead person on a rearing white charger and puts a sword in his hand — well, a celebrant just has to go along with that. Sir Joshua Reynolds didn’t complain, he just banked the cheques. It’s not the job of the portraitist to speak truth to she who pays the piper.
This being so, I find it hard to understand the practice of those celebrants who treat a ceremony as if it were a present to be unwrapped in front of the family. To do so misunderstands, it seems to me, the nature of the commission. It’s also far too risky. A funeral is no place to misspeak.
But there are two sides to this, I am sure. I wish I could see the other. You’ll probably point it out to me.
What will be the one-sentence summary of your life, do you suppose?