annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Eulogies

1/4/24
My friend Bill who died last month will finally have a funeral this week, Friday. I’ve been asked to speak about him, about knowing him for fifty years, and I’m struggling a bit, for various reasons. Partly that’s because we’ve never been really, really close, though we were very fond of each other, especially for the last ten years or so. Partly because for probably the first twenty years of our acquaintance he was a shockingly awful alcoholic and sadly, that’s where the best stories come from. He sobered up and grew into a lovely gentle, kindly man, albeit with a loud voice and a fantastic ability as a fucking swearer to beat all swearers, even me, and I’m no slouch, but that’s not so easy to illustrate. Especially in a church. He lived on the peninsula known as the beach, where I lived for donkey’s years so the service is taking place in the church on the beach, where my dad’s funeral was held, where Sammie got married. So lots of memories, all tinged with sadness. I was asked to speak by Bill’s wife and daughter, as I’m the person who’s known him longest now, and also because I’ve done this before, several times, and done it well. I spoke about my darling friend Joan and just weeks later, dear Julia. Then when Julia’s dad died, after the minister at his wife’s funeral had got several things just plain wrong about her life, I was asked to do the whole thing – introducing other people to speak, but giving the main eulogy. Which I was happy to do as he was a dear, dear man, who had been like a second father to me and to various other waifs and strays about the town. I spoke at my brother’s funeral and at Sammie’s. I can do it – having been a teacher I’m no stranger to standing up and holding forth when really all I want to do is crawl into a hole and weep.
Maybe I need to tell the untellable tales here, as at the moment they’re all I can think of. I want to do him proud, and I want his wife and daughter to hear what a good man he was and how much he was loved and respected and how much we’ll miss him. Which we will – he was a mainstay of the Tuesday art group, the tail end of the mental health day centre’s provision, now only on zoom, with no teacher, just us, hanging out together and painting. We’re a motley crew, the art group, in terms of age, class, mental health and politics. Me and Bill are dyed in the wool lefties, the rest of them are a bunch of right wing fuckers. We’d both given up challenging them about stuff – nobody ever changes anyone else’s mind really, do they? But too many of them thought Boris Johnson was a lovable clown, and have unmentionable opinions on immigration, despite several of them having lived abroad at various times in their lives – they’re ex-pats, not immigrants. I’ll miss Bill SO MUCH there – I already have done as he was in hospital for several weeks before he died. But I can’t talk about that as they’re going to be there, at the funeral, and one of them is going to speak about him in the art group as he was truly loved. And although they piss me off about politics, especially politics with a small p, they’re also my mates, my crew.

12:46 a.m. - 02.04.24

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