Always Coming Home

[robinturner]

Back to England tomorrow for my father's funeral. Although it's a sad event, at the same time I'm happy to be going home. I'll see my mother, my brother and my homeland. I have never been a nationalist, but I've always been an intense regionalist, for lack of a better word. It's like "memleket" in Turkish or "Heimat" in German.

Comments

funeral

[watermelonpunch.livejournal.com]

Have they held up the funeral for you? Or is this delay the norm?

Re: funeral

[solri.livejournal.com]

It's the norm these days - we British like to wrap death up in bureaucracy. My Turkish friends find it really strange - here you're dead and buried in a few days. They also get totally freaked out by the idea of cremation. With my Saxon/Viking ancestry, I find it preferable - to the extent that I care at all about what happens to my mortal remains, I'd prefer a big funeral pyre, with lots of mead all round.

Re: funeral

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

Yes, my Viking side tells me to want cremation, but my Jewish side tells me that that would be absolutely reprehensible.

Re: funeral

[watermelonpunch.livejournal.com]

I'm 100% Polish, and I don't give a damn what the hell is done to my body because I don't think about it!

If I think about it... my preferred method of body disposal would be to leave my body out in the woods for scavenger animals. To me that sounds very much preferable and more natural than embalming (YICK), burying, or burning.

Re: funeral

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

YES! I totally agree with you! I'd most like to be left in the forest to rot. Too bad that's not legal.

Re: funeral

[watermelonpunch.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's legal somewhere. haha.

Re: funeral

[solri.livejournal.com]

Well they still have sky-burials in Tibet, I hear. Only for monks and nuns, though. The body is made into meatballs and left for the vultures.

I kind of like the idea of embalming because it's so gross. I like the idea that I can still be scaring children years after my death.

Re: funeral

[watermelonpunch.livejournal.com]

I don't like the meatballs part.

I saw a film of an embalming... and it really wigged me out.

Re: funeral

[watermelonpunch.livejournal.com]

Wow... yeah, I think the Jews have got it the best... the body's in the ground by sunset the next day.

My father died on a Monday evening, the wake was on Thursday evening, and his body was buried on Friday morning.
And some people thought that was a long time.

So 2 weeks is fairly normal in Britian, huh?