TOM JACKSON
I had hoped my family might get through
this unscathed. Even given the misfortune
of most of us living in the country with
just about the highest per capita death rate
in the world, that was not an unreasonable
desire. About one in 545 members of the
UK population has died of Covid. I have
13 surviving first cousins, which is I’m guessing
a few more than the average, but still, my
extended family does not number anything
like 545. Nor, surely, however many removeds
you include, does anyone’s.
Thus, although one in 16 British citizens has
had it or has got it, many will not have lost a
close or even close-ish relation. A much loved
friend, colleague, neighbour or acquaintance,
possibly. Probably, even. But the odds against
losing a family member remain pretty
favourable. And indeed, with the end
seemingly in sight, my family almost came
out on the right side of the statistics.
Until January 26, that is, when my uncle
Malcolm, 84, husband of my late dad’s sister
Adele for not far short of 60 years, succumbed
to the dread disease. Nicola and I attended his
funeral on February 17 at St Mildred’s church
in southeast London. It was our first, and
I fervently hope, only first-hand exposure
to lockdown-mandated obsequies.
St. Mildred’s, bang on the South Circular,
is a very big church, one of those edifices you
see in suburbs everywhere, barely remarking
them until you’re inside one, whereupon
you realise how fine they often are. It could
accommodate hundreds of people, no problem.
As it was there were fewer than 30 mourners,
spaced well apart in our respective bubbles,
as the rules decree.
I think I can speak for all of us when
I say that neither my cousin Edmund, nor
his brother John, nor me, northerners of a
certain vintage as we are, are particularly
huggy kinda guys. Yet as we three met at
the church door, condolences offered and
accepted, a cousinly embrace – fumblingly
awkward in the tradition of the middle-aged
English male as it may have been – would
surely have ensued in normal times. I wanted
to offer one, anyway. But I couldn’t.
The Rev Daphne Clifton said in her
opening remarks that in other circumstances
her church would have been full to bursting.
I suppose vicars often say that to honour the
deceased and comfort the bereaved, but in
my uncle Malcolm’s case, it would have been
true. A retired grammar school headmaster,pillar of rugby and golf clubs in Lancashire,
Yorkshire and then Birmingham, former
district councillor and one-time defeated
parliamentary candidate, am-dram enthusiast
and all-round lovely man, he made and kept
friends easily. Nicola only met Malcolm a
few times. “But I knew straight away he was
kind,” she said on the way home. That’s not
a bad epitaph, in my book.
The service was videoed and there are plans
for a memorial do up north as and when, but
still, I felt for my cousins and their kids to see
such a threadbare attendance, necessary as we
all accepted it to be. When my own dad died
it cheered me greatly that the chapel was full.
Many families have been denied even the
“luxury” of any funeral at all. When all this
is over, a great deal of delayed bereavement
counselling will be needed. It won’t just be a
financial tab we’ll have to pick up as a country.
I hadn’t realised you’re not allowed to sing
in church. Given my singing voice, I can’t deny
part of me was relieved. That said, when we
all stood for Abide with Me, the organist doing
her stuff, in contrast to usual, I found myself
mumbling along through the mask. Fast falls
the eventide. When you’re supposed to sing,
you pretend; when you’re not supposed to,
you want to.
Edmund, a teacher like his dad and no
stranger to public speaking, stumbled a couple
of times during his eulogy. I struggled too,
when he mentioned his “much missed Uncle
Peter”, my own dad. That was in the context
of Malcolm being a true-blue Tory and my
dad being solidly old Labour but how they
always respected each other’s views and got
along. When my cousin sat back down in the
pew in front of me – a long way in front of me,
as per compliance rules – I wanted to scuttle
forward and pat him on the back for a hard
job well done.
I didn’t. I should have, but I didn’t want
to make any super-sticklers behind me feel
awkward or upset, as some may have been,
even at this brief physical contact.
Church or not, I don’t mind admitting that,
at that moment of not patting my cousin on
the back at his dad’s funeral, under my breath
and through my mask, right then and there,
I cursed this damned virus a dozen times over.
You know you must be upset when
you’re swearing (very quietly) at a blinking
micro-organism. n[email protected]‘I’d hoped my family
would get through
Covid unscathed.
It wasn’t to be. At
the funeral, I cursed
this damned virus’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
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