A send-off is a mark of life well lived
THE prospect of a 90-minute High Anglican Requiem Eucharist was somewhat daunting — even to a churchgoer like me.
Yet the Devon funeral on Wednesday was an object lesson in family friendship, shared memories and the collective significance of ritual.
These days (sadly) fewer and fewer people consider church services essential for marking the great stages of life: christenings, confirmation, marriage and death. Yes, there are now many dedicated celebrants (see humanists.uk) who create wonderful rituals for those who don’t seek the additional seriousness of a holy place.
What matters is the awareness that some sort of formal ceremony makes events memorable. Such moments are needed as true markers in life.
On a day of sunlight, warmth, tears and much laughter (at the village hall wake) we were saying goodbye to Ronald Travers OBE, my ex-husband’s step-father, who worked tirelessly for the disabled, through the famous Leonard Cheshire Foundation.
Back in the early 1970s he’d swapped a senior role in BBC Drama for this international work. A merry spirit as well as a man of faith, he and I were close — and he was greatly loved, all the more so when left bereft after my mother-in-law died.
In the extended family no importance was ever attached to the prefix ‘step-’ or to the notion of a ‘half-sister’ — or for that matter, to separation and divorce. At least three important mourners were there with second families, while their first wives, partners and adult children played a part.
The village in South Devon was where my first husband and I spent a three-day honeymoon in February 1968, and aching nostalgia can make visits poignant. But my son and daughter now holiday there with their own kids.
And some of the next generation were in the ancient church, smelling incense, singing hymns and becoming a part of a whole. Yes, that is how it can be.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.