Funerals are overwhelming affairs.Ironically ,it's at a funeral you are reminded so dearly of a loved one and not when he is alive and kicking.You realize the substantially reduced meaning of your life without him, you are caught off guard.It is at a funeral, you become aware of the fact that their are things in Life you can not control, no matter how badly you want it.You look back at your own life and find that doing something was invariably a better option than doing nothing and just wishing.The pointlessness of your daily life stands right in your face, while you are trying hard to overcome the unbearble grief.
Recently I saw 'Four Wedding and a Funeral'.A spectacular movie without a second thought.Short,sweet,heartfelt and certainly made by person who is an avid observer of people and life.See it and you will understand what I mean by that.The attention paid to little nuisance is clearly a work of a virtuoso.
Here is a scene in the movie, the 'mad old man' is dead and this is his eulolgy.A poem by W H Auden, rarely in a movie you see a sequence so heartfelt, you mourn along with the people on the screen:
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W. H. Auden
