Attending a funeral when you have a cancer diagnosis

 I was suddenly thrown back to a moment more than three years ago, when Cro and I attended the funeral of an old neighbour. I don't know why this suddenly came to mind, but I suppose it has a relation to a book I am reading at the moment about the way that your brain chooses to prioritise what it remembers, and even what it perceives. 

The context was that one of our old neighbours died after a long illness and we went to her funeral with her family and local friends. It was a burial rather than a cremation and took place at our local cemetery in town, in fact only walking distance from our house. Our focus and intention was to honour and support both the family and our neighbour's memory by being there like everyone else as witnesses. We went to the church and heard the service and a lot of new information about her life and friendships and achievements. It was, I hope, a consolation to her family that we all found out more about her life in the round and not just the last years that we were part of, warm though those were. 

After the church we went up to the graveyard to see her laid to rest. I know from experience that there is a necessary, and probably useful, finality in seeing a coffin lowered into a grave or leaving a coffin for cremation. It tells you visually that someone's life has come to an end even if their memory and presence in your heart and mind is still as strong as ever. 

But the key difference here was that Cro had already had her lung cancer diagnosis and well understood that a stage 3C diagnosis is one step before the final stage 4. Treatment had started, but Cro was an immense realist. She would not be the person to leave bills unopened and had certainly opened and digested even this most serious of messages. So I suddenly realised as she and I stood there looking at the coffin being lowered that this had all become different from any previous funeral. When death is an abstract you can focus on the emotions of the people who are grieving. When it becomes less abstract and more concrete you cannot but think of your own case, and the high probability that you will follow this path yourself within the foreseeable future. 

I think I held Cro's arm more tightly as we stood there, but even I had been ambushed by the realisation that it was not only your own health that had its meaning changed by a cancer diagnosis. Other things such as the funerals of friends have their meaning and understanding changed. Now that I am also diagnosed with cancer, I would say that it is part of the process of acknowledging your own mortal state, but I understand that my own diagnosis is much less immediate in its message and perhaps will become clearer a few more years down the line. I may have not yet got to the point where these events have the same effect on me.

Six months later we buried my own mother, and even though Cro was too unwell to attend that one, you could not avoid seeing that the feelings of grief for our mother and pre-grief for Cro were intermingled in the minds of those who knew and loved them both. It was as though remembering the life and character of one person you really loved could not in any way be not intermingled with all the other people that you love, especially when one of them was seriously ill. So all our memories and feelings seem to be linked and capacious, especially where these strong emotions are.

I hope that this all does not come across as too maudlin; it is certainly not intended that way. I think we need to remember how we felt at moments like these to have a full understanding of life, both our own and that of those we love. And of our and their death too.