agentblack

My Grandad, with Granny (and small dog). He is all of five minutes away from falling asleep, instantaenously.

My grandad's funeral was today. I can't stand funerals, they're always awful. It's not so much that someone has died, but more because they're so tedious and so completely removed from any context in which you knew the person you're alledgedly there to celebrate.

I feel a bit guilty admitting it, but I wasn't that upset today. I wasn't amazingly close to my grandad, we saw him now and again, and he'd had loads of heart attacks before the one that had finally finished him off. It was still a shame that he died, and I'm glad that I spoke to him on the phone the day before.

He was a kindly old man who used to fall asleep on the sofa at christmas. He drove a lorry for the army during World War Two, and then started working for the GPO, and eventually worked with one of the very first computers. He'd been retired longer than I've been alive, and he died quickly. He was 82. It could've been worse.

After he died, we discovered that he'd been covering up just how bad Gran was, in terms of detiriorating memory and such. It turns out he'd been cleaning he house and cooking the meals and everything, because she couldn't deal with it anymore. He'd never mentioned it to anyone, and no one had any idea. I felt bad for underestimating him all this time, because he'd never complained about it or asked for help.

Whenever Gran got names wrong or said something that wasn't quite right, Grandad always joked that she was going deaf, except now we know that she wasn't and that was just his way of covering it up. He impressed me a lot, when I found out that.

ANYWAY - I had a hard time connecting that person with a bunch of people droning out a few miserable hymns and then listening to a priest speak some nonsense from the bible. I don't even think that Grandad was properly religious.

When I die I don't want to be cremated, I want to be DETONATED. I want to get carted of somewhere desolate and out of the way and get blown up into a fine red mist. Everyone can have a little countdown and one of my filthy brood can flick the switch that detonates couple of hundred kilos of plastique. Afterwards they'll have a big bonfire, a barbecue and then let off about five hundred pounds worth of fireworks.
There will not be a sniff of christianity or organised religion about the whole thing. No Prayer, No Hymns, no Organ Music.

Just lots of meat and beer and whisky and fireworks. Yes. Lots of Fireworks.