An Interlude Of Sanity……..Funerals….
by Bernie Bell - 10:23 on 19 September 2022
Sunday evening – the telly was wall-to-wall ‘Eve of…….’ I turned it off. I took my glasses off - always a nice feeling - it means I don’t see too well, but that didn’t matter as I sat back, put my feet up, closed my eyes and, as Mike made a veg & dhal curry we grooved to Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnb-D24qXIs.
We’d had a good day – a sunny autumn Orkney day in the garden and then while the world got wound up about …something or other…we chilled.
Oh yes.
And today is the day of The Funeral – or should I say it’s the day of the funeral of one particular old woman. Because of this other funerals due to take place today have been cancelled.
When someone close to you dies it’s hard enough to deal with. Then, organizing the funeral and accompanying funeral rites has to be dealt with too. I believe a funeral to be a positive step along the way of beginning to accept loss and after the funeral there can be an element of ‘That’s over – now we can assess – begin to move on.’
Many people in Britain will have arranged funerals for today, including relatives needing to come from far away having booked their travel arrangements and accommodation and also probably having taken time off work to enable them to say ‘Farewell’ to the one who is no longer there and to be with those who are.
Funeral Directors, Florists, etc. etc. will have been organized and ready to be involved in the funerals scheduled for today. All this will have had to be changed, re-scheduled.
To me, the message is that ordinary people are not really people – they don’t have feelings or lives that matter - as servants and ‘The Poor’ used to be seen - or not seen - as ‘seeing’ them could make life inconvenient and uncomfortable for the ‘nobs’.
I’ve written along these lines previously in this article…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/08/26/seeing-people-as-non-people-or-not-seeing-them-at-all/
“To the rich, the poor are often invisible, and not seen, or not seen as being people, quite as the rich are – I suppose they have to be, or the rich couldn’t carry on being as they are and treating the poor as they do.
“See him riding in his carriage
Past the gutter where she stands
He has made a stylish marriage
While she wrings he ringless hands.”
‘She was poor, but she was honest’ by Billy Bennett
It jumps up and bites them on the bum though, as in squalor and disease cheek by jowl with the rich in Victorian England – disease is no respecter of walls. I would say why don’t they learn but to learn they would have to be prepared to look and to see.
In some times and places to men, women were almost not human – they needed to see women that way to be able to get away with how they treated them. Still the case, in some societies.
Servants were invisible – strangely enough – waiters and waitresses often are, even these days – have you noticed how folk don’t engage with the people ‘serving’ them? Some do – many don’t.
Reading this, in Pyotr Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” ………………..
“Some training – good or bad, let them decide it for themselves – is required in a lady of the richer classes to render her able to pass by a shivering and hungry child in the street without noticing it.”
……………reminded me of how much people have to become non-people for some people to be able to accept their own behaviour towards them.
Of course – slavery is another one – they actually kidded themselves, or tried to kid themselves, that the ‘slaves’ weren’t actually people. Strange – they had two arms, two legs, eyes at the front, could obviously think, speak in a number of recognizable languages – and even could inter-breed with their ‘owners’ – funny that, when they weren’t ‘people’.
And the British in India – often didn’t see the Indian people as….people, not really – just servants and sort-of glorified work-horses.
They have to train themselves, or be trained, or kid themselves, to be able to go ahead with that behaviour.
We really are a strange and complex species. We’re very good at self-delusion, when it suits us.
As my mum would say “Just because everyone puts their hand in the fire – doesn’t mean you put your hand in the fire, too.” If we could learn, and train ourselves, to each take responsibility for our actions, and not let ourselves be carried along with the tides of hysteria wrong-doing might not be as likely to be allowed to happen to people, now.
Mass-evictions/deportation of asylum seekers? Nations refusing to accept PEOPLE escaping from horrors?”
I’d say that the attitude displayed in the cancellation for today of so many needful, human events in which the people of Britain would have been involved can’t be doing the Monarchy any good at all – but then I see the queues to see Lizzie Two’s coffin.
I’m hoping that some - many - Funeral Directors with funerals booked for today will have contacted those involved and asked would they prefer to proceed as planned and, if the answer was ‘Yes’, that they will do so. I’ll be interested to see the number of those who chose to go ahead.
And what will happen to those who disobey? Surely they won’t be arrested? These days - you never know.
England is regressing. Scotland needs to be progressing – preferably without the burden of a Monarchy!
A last word on funerals….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1-I6BYuIjI
******
PS - Please be aware that this happened here, in the Divided Kingdom.... https://twitter.com/boca_meda/status/1571573062063063043
PPS - That's odd...the footage has disappeared......???
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