I went to a funeral today. The deceased wasn’t anyone I knew well at all but a father of a colleague I’ve known for around half of my life. The colleague, that is. She’d lost her mother last year, suddenly, and her father hadn’t been that well either until things went rather south rather too quickly at the beginning of school holidays in July. Noel told her to stay home to help take care of her father in the final stretch of his life, and between her and her sister, they did. Our team (as always) were amazing; they rallied around her, picking up all sorts of little duties here and there to allow her to not think about work and spend all her time and attention on being with her father as much as possible. We all are so lucky we work so well together for that to not be an issue.
The weather forecast today, the day of the funeral — one of those graveside services because he loved the outdoors and wanted something simple — was for a major wintery system to move through in the morning. Luck was on his and our side as the sky was bright blue and although the air was bitter, it was calm and the sun was shining on the part of the cemetery where a bright green earth-blanket (for lack of a better term) covered the copious amount of soil towering next to the rather deep hole in the ground. Around the hole, a sturdy steel framework hugged the surface, taut green straps across the top of the hole. Her father was older — 90, I found out from the funeral program — so our team comprised about a quarter of those in attendance as many of the people he knew in his life had already passed in the months, years, and decades prior.
My colleague’s husband officiated the ceremony. He’d done the same for his mother-in-law’s funeral last winter, although we were inside the chapel at the local crematorium for that service. He held it together remarkably well; I would have fallen apart every other word.
He spoke; my colleague spoke; my colleague’s brother spoke; my colleague’s niece spoke; and a friend of their family spoke.
I cried. Not ugly cried. Just a tear or twelve here and there. It was all too close at times for me.
You see, his grandchildren called him and his wife Opa and Oma. Those terms aren’t very familiar to many of the people I knew and know in the States, and they’re equally unfamiliar in New Zealand.
It was a cold winter’s day when we buried my Oma. Sure, it was 35+ years ago on a more rainy winter’s day half a world away, but seeing the young brother standing with his older sister (the niece) as she spoke, I saw myself. He was a pall bearer, as was I. He struggled to keep it together but slightly broke; as the rain poured down at my Oma’s grave, my Aunt Joan consoled me as she held the umbrella over us both.
It brought back a lot of memories, and it affected me a great deal.
Her father, like my grandparents, moved overseas in the hope of a better life after World War 2. Away from Europe, away from the scars, away from the trauma of a madman who convinced half a continent to hate and kill those different from themselves. (As an aside, an equal movement creeps like cancer over the USA and several other nations right now, and I can’t believe how blindly some people either are following it or not fighting it. Alas. I digress.)
Before the service, my colleague came up to our team (all standing awkwardly on the narrow paved road beside the graves in that part of the cemetery) and told us about this cat who had jumped the fence from the aged care living facility on the other side (quite horrifying in itself, really) and ran over to visit them at the grave before anyone arrived. Tail up, happy kitty. Had it been oblivious and only wanted a cuddle with new humans, or had it been through this all before and was some kindred spirit trying to tell the recently bereaved that everything would be okay because it would look after their loved ones? Guard and visit their graves as the dead adjusted to their new reality? The image of Star, and moreso Twinkle, consoling people who were upset made me feel a bit better.
As I was struggling towards the end of the service, when they started lowering the casket into the ground, the cat arrived: tail up, silent, but happily approaching the group. Then a tui called out from a tree nearby — tui are quite rare in the city, or in Christchurch at least — and it dawned on me it was like some sort of greater force was telling us everything was going to be okay. Life goes on. Those who have passed before us speak to us in other ways. The animals of this area will guard those we love who have passed on before us. The world continues on in a different form.
This evening, the winter storm started to roll through. Star and Twinkle hunkered down inside. Star, of course, spent a great deal of time cuddling with me. Twinkle rubbed her head into my hand a bit harder than usual, maybe sensing I had been upset today, as if to mirror the cemetery cat’s reassurance. And Noel and I seemed a bit more tired than usual.
As I type this, Noel’s fast asleep in bed, gently snoring. I’m haunted by the day’s events.
But I promise not to be too melancholy for too long.
Life goes on.
Beam Me Up, Scotty 
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