The "Corpse"

The “Corpse”

The following is full of real events and people. Of course, a lot of it is wildly imagined, such as the kirk, the minister, the coffin and the remembrance service – some of this will be activated in future!  

“Thank you, thank you, now please leave the lid off,” I said to the kirk 

minister, Mr McTaggart. His tiny rural kirk was in north-east Scotland in whose heathery hills I had run about as a child, very fitting for my farewell. He had kindly provided wobbly wooden steps for me to go up and drop down into the fine shiny brown box. A few old friends had turned up to be an audience, a couple of them long-term medicos, to help me practise being a corpse before the real occasion came along – later rather than sooner I hoped. I lay back, closed my eyes and appreciated the closing verses of the introductory music, sung by Elvis:

It's now or never

Come hold me tight

Kiss me my darling

Be mine tonight.

Tomorrow will be too late

It's now or never

My love won't wait.

My friends from schooldays were going to say a few words of remembrance; I had chosen the music. The minister would possibly say what a terrible church goer I was but made up for it with charity work and helping old folks in care. I had asked him to mention my befriending a centenarian for six years. Then possibly describing my work in helping animals, especially cats and dogs, not forgetting ducks, hens, guinea fowl, little birds and anything that moved. 

Harvey stood up and recalled many great times together, such as going to France, frequenting Edinburgh pubs, visiting Hong Kong and Tokyo, and getting together many times in New Zealand with mutual friend, Jimmy. There were kind words for my helping his girls with advising on teaching as a career and encouraging their creative writing. Then there was all the joking and laughs, silly stuff that you’d think men of our advanced years would have grown out of. Instead, it just seemed to have increased and deepened. Harvey recalled how I read a Burns poem, “Ae Fond Kiss” at his mother’s funeral service. He sang the praises of many visits we paid his family usually at New Year, going to the summer resort of Noosa for a week. He expressed jocular regrets that I wasn’t more like him – a Right Wing supporter, a climate change denier, private school and medicine believer, and a denouncer of any funny kind of sexuality. He finished with good memories of dining on Hastings Street in Noosa, always having to go

again to the bottle shop for another bottle of Margaret River.

I raised my arms and clapped my hands after his spiel, it was so much appreciated. The three others there joined in. 

My wife was next recounting how we met nearly 45 years before, how she was uncertain at first but her mother told her to give me one more chance, going out for a lovely dinner at which she said she saw something special –  and not just in the menu! Well, thank goodness for that because I was head over heels! We travelled widely together, especially in Asia because we lived and worked nearly 20 years in Tokyo – exciting years, great teaching, making wonderful friends for life.

Jimmy got up next and managed to raise a few laughs telling a couple of daft jokes that we had all enjoyed over the years. One of them was very appropriate:

They said it was the coughin' that carried him off, but it wasn’t, it was the coffin they carried him off in.

And the next one was also right on the button for the location:

Any time we saw a kilt, one of us would say, “There’s nothing worn under the kilt, you know.” And the other would say, “Aye, it’s all in perfect workin' order.”

There were odd silences after a couple of phrases in the jokes, which I put down to either trying to recall the joke exactly or more likely he was feeling a bit odd telling it in a kirk. How wrong I was as things soon turned weirder. Jimmy continued:

“We often remembered our summers as students working for six or seven weeks as gravediggers, a great outdoor job which was mostly just cutting the grass in country graveyards in Perthshire in central Scotland. It was a grand time, enabling us to save enough money to travel to France, Greece or Spain for a month’s holiday.”  

I was pleased Jimmy recalled that, it was wonderful for me and I liked that juxtaposition of telling about gravedigging while I was lying in a coffin. I was also glad the odd pausing had stopped. 

Not for long! He hung his head, pausing lengthily, as though trying to remember what to say. It was just a rehearsal so it didn’t have to be perfect. He started up again as Mr McTaggart had leaned forward to ask me if he should check if he was all right. I shook my head as best I could lying cramped in the box and wishing fervently that Jimmy would get on with it because playing dead was actually not much fun. 

“I don’t know if this is the place or time … to speak my mind … but it has been troubling me that such a long friendship as ours … should come to this kind of farce.”

I could feel my eyes widen wondering what on earth he was about to blurt out, being so open, even downright rude about my “living funeral”, an event that didn’t have to be imbued with the dignity and respect of the real thing. I wished for some music. I tried to remember the first song. Something to do with living for sure. Got it! Queen’s “Let Me Live”!  Appropriate for this kind of fake function. Just need to ask Mr McTaggart to get over to the sound system. 

Jimmy was starting up again. 

“I use that word advisedly. Who in his right mind would pretend to be dead? … Who would want to practise a ceremony to remember him, involving others in such a debacle? … I have no idea why I bothered to attend. Maybe curiosity, I don’t know … I’ll tell you something, if this kirk is where the real thing is going to be held it’s a helluva distance for people to travel. But maybe that’s exactly what was intended, a final act of abuse on friends and relatives.” 

Wow! What a word to use – abuse! What irony to be saying such as he himself abuses the occasion and the place. Where was McTaggart? Had he gone to the toilet? Maybe good he couldn’t hear this kind of thing in his kirk.

Jimmy continued with his invective and bile.

“As if he hadn’t achieved that kind of anti-social stuff enough in his life … I don’t think he has any idea of how many people he has pissed off in his time.”

There was a longish pause as if he was thinking he’d gone too far and how to recover some composure or find a way to repair the situation. Or maybe he had corpsed, couldn’t think what to say next. All I could think was who on earth was he talking about, I mean who were all the numerous people? And further, this is not the kind of thing to be brought up or aired at a ceremony of this style – I mean remembering a dead friend, especially if he’s really dead. 

I couldn’t resist it, simply had to say something about his bad language in the Lord’s house, also needed to ask the question. I did my best to get on to an elbow, not an easy thing from lying flat in a narrow coffin.

“That’s no word to use here, please refrain! And while we’re here, pray tell who you are thinking of who are displeased with me.”

He answered a little too promptly for comfort, but I was already flat on my back again looking up into the rafters.

“Well, there’s me and the wife for starters, you kept us waiting in hellish cold for over an hour one time going to some function in Glasgow. Don’t know why we agreed to be picked up by you.” 

I had a straight and good answer to that. 

“That wasn’t you waiting, it was you and your wife picking up my parents! Better check your past experiences there before the real performance here, not that you’ll repeat it now – I’m wishing and hoping!”  

He looked momentarily chastened but came out with another example:

“Your girlfriend in Greece was totally angry with you because you locked her in your room all day, a room with no toilet at the inn. What a terrible thing to do!” 

I nearly couldn’t believe the transferring that was going on. I thought fleetingly this was maybe his weird way of unburdening.

I shouted from my prone position: “That was you! That was you who locked Claire in the room! None of us others knew anything about it until later, then we were dumbfounded that you could have done such a daft and risky thing. You must have been very angry about something.”

Out of the corner of an eye I spotted Mr McTaggart returning to his chair. I motioned him over with a waving hand. I told him, “For the love of the good Lord, please scroll to song number four, and turn it up loud.” 

Jimmy was still standing, looking as if he was thinking. Or was he corpsing again? Surely not another spurious example of causing people upset and discomposure, but I was wrong.

“OK, here’s one for sure. You lost me a heap of money when you recommended some Australian shares whose names I’ve forgotten now, but one of your patients, probably a psycho, had told you inside information.”

I shouted loud to the rafters! “That wasn’t me, that was Harvey! He’s sitting beside you, ask him! I hope he’s able to tell the truth.” 

At that moment, number four track started very loud: “Silence is Golden” by The Tremeloes from the mid-Sixties. It sounded great in the small kirk, some of the lines happily pertinent to what had just occurred.

Silence is golden

But my eyes still see

Silence is golden, golden

But my eyes still see.

How many times will she fall for his lines

Should I tell her or should I be cool

And if I tried I know she'd say I lied

Mind your business don't hurt her you fool.

Jimmy had sat down, he was stuffed. Thank god there is a god! What a strange episode, it made me wish I’d checked more carefully beforehand what people were going to talk about. Imagine if a dozen friends and hangers-on had turned up, but I suppose a “Living Funeral” wasn’t going to be everyone’s glass of whisky. 

The next track, number five was “I Guess it doesn’t Matter Anymore” by Buddy Holly. Again some lines strangely apposite to events today. 

Well, you go your way and I'll go mine

Now and forever till the end of time

I'll find somebody new and baby

We'll say we're through and you won't matter anymore.

Then the sixth close-to-finish track, just a short blast of “The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones, an old favourite from 60 years before. I can almost hear you wondering what the earlier tracks were. Number two was Cliff Richard’s “Living Doll” and number three was “Better Off Dead” by Elton John. Yeh, great lines like:

This is not where I belong

You gonna miss me when I'm gone

Gone, gone.

Now the last song was starting – Billy Hayley and the Comets great rocker, “Rock Around the Clock”. I wanted to say goodbye with a real thumper, something to get people energised. I looked over to see Jimmy reviving a little after his miserable mouthing. I was glad he was all right. In fact, he was out of his pew and heading down the aisle, possibly to pretend to bid farewell. He reached the side of my coffin. I had closed my eyes. He paused a moment, then quietly said, 

“I wouldn’t be seen dead at your funeral!”

I retorted with, “No probs there, pal. So you’ll go before me! I hope you’re going to organise a ‘death rehearsal’ for me to attend!”

When the clock strikes twelve, we'll cool off then

Start a rockin' round the clock again

We're gonna rock around the clock tonight

We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight

We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.