Grieving my friend, I began crashing the funerals of strangers

New motherhood is a strange and disorienting time. Birth opens up that thin place where the eternal and temporal collide. I was grateful to meet someone from my mothers’ group with whom I could navigate it.

Sarah and I clicked as we chatted openly about how overwhelming parenthood was. She was creative and fun, the kind of mum-friend you could imagine having drinks with after the kids were asleep. After moving from Sydney to Torquay in Victoria, getting married and falling pregnant within a year, I found in Sarah a link to the life I’d left behind. The one where theatre-loving friends were in abundance and poetry slams were as common as boutique coffee shops.

You can ­livestream most people’s funerals now; it has become a standard part of funeral packages, if the ­families give permission.Credit: Miguel Manich/illustrationroom.com.au

Before Christmas 2019, as the seed of a pandemic took root in a faraway place, my husband and I hosted an afternoon barbecue. I invited Sarah. The party kicked on into the early ­evening, but she never arrived. The day before, she had been driving home from Melbourne with her son on the back seat. A passing truck had flung a towing hook lying on the highway through her windscreen, killing her instantly.

Her funeral was like a dream or a nightmare. Finding a friend like Sarah had felt like winning the lottery. And now there she was, lying in a white coffin forever. A quartet played Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

We had meant to go for a swim with our babies that week. She had been into sun protection: sunscreen, big floppy hats and layers of clothes to cover her porcelain skin. I kept thinking about this long after the funeral, all that worry about her skin in the sun. And her son, who emerged from the back seat that day without a scratch, growing up with no living memories of her.

Then COVID-19 hit and death took centre stage. I saw it everywhere: in the faces of the old and grey, the young and fit – and even in my children.

I began tuning in to the funerals of strangers. I don’t know why. You can ­livestream most people’s funerals now; it has become a standard part of funeral packages, if the ­families give permission.

Funeral services generally follow a pattern. As the guests trickle in there’s a song playing, perhaps by The Beach Boys, Louis Armstrong or Whitney Houston. Then a funeral director might open by welcoming everyone, assuring them that whatever they’re feeling is normal. It feels strange watching a celebrant unknown to the dead performing this solemnity.

Sometimes the atmosphere is bittersweet, a celebration of a life well-lived. Other times, it’s heartbreakingly sad. There was the woman who’d befriend anyone; the young man with so much potential whose death was shrouded in mystery (or maybe just unspoken); a four-year-old who died after a sudden illness; the elderly man who leant over to kiss his wife’s casket before they took her out.

Maybe I watch funerals because they’re the fundamental essence of things. Through all the noise and busyness, the solid dimensions of life can be felt, like the outline of a tombstone.

While others scroll through Instagram, I look through death notices. I’m looking for the young; I want their story. An elderly death doesn’t hold much mystery, but a premature death raises questions and I need answers. How can life be cut short, suddenly, on a bright sunny day?

I visited Sarah’s grave a few months ago. It had been three years since we were in the throes of new life. I didn’t have flowers, so I took a latte and placed it on the ledge of the headstone. I wasn’t sure if I should talk to her or if that’s something they only do in movies. I wanted to tell her about our babies, who aren’t really babies anymore; what they’d been doing and learning and how they were growing. I wanted to tell her that the parenting thing had got easier since those early days. I wanted her to know that I missed her and that I wished we could hang out again.

But I didn’t. Instead, I stared at the stone with her name carved into it – and two simple years, 1982-2019. Birth and death, and a whole life inside that dash like a shooting star.

Maybe I watch funerals because they’re the fundamental essence of things. Through all the noise and busyness, the solid dimensions of life can be felt, like the outline of a tombstone. I want to trace the edges of where it begins and where it ends; feel it pulsing with a mysterious spiritual energy. If I can touch the realness of death, will I still fear it?

Whatever psychological malady explains my funeral crashing, I know this: when the roaring confusion of life suddenly ceases, all we have is our story, a gathering of sad faces, a collection of photographs, a body inside a lonely cocoon festooned with flowers. And our life, brilliant and blazing, in the dreams of those we loved.

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