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Dad’s funeral  7

Today was the day and, if such a thing is possible, it was a good funeral. There were tears and heartache but I think we did him proud.

He had a thing with trees and made a habit of planting many in his lifetime (not least of all a patch of about 50 Norwegian spruce/Christmas trees in his and Mum’s back garden) so we picked a coffin made out of willow. I know “traditional” coffins are wood anyway but it seemed more appropriate to have something more natural, i.e. not cut, planed, treated, carved, varnished etc. but simply pruned and weaved together - someone mentioned that had Dad been there he’d have probably made some joke about it being a laundry basket …

We had four pieces of music during the service, three of which were favourites of Dad’s:

• “I’ll Find My Way Home” by Jon & Vangelis for when we went in;
• “Silver Wings” by Mike Rowland for the “quiet time for reflection”;
• “Nimrod” by Edward Elgar for the committal;
• “Tuba Smarties” by Sky for when we exited;

I chose the last one because it’s a slightly upbeat, almost jokey track that Dad loved and played loads when I was a kid, but at the last minute I had a mild panic attack that the others would think it was inappropriate - I needn’t have worried because they said it was the perfect ending and exactly what he would’ve wanted … and that nearly made me cry!

Two great friends, both of whom are named Sue, helped with the transport - Sue P drove me and N in a friend’s wheelchair accessible van and Sue Horne drove Mum and a couple of others.

After the service we all went to The Holt Fleet Inn (see the bottom of this page) in Holt Heath, drank and stuffed our faces … it’s what Dad would’ve wanted us to do!

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