I wasn�t looking forward to the two hour journey there and the two hour journey back. And it wasn�t because I expected that there would be a black cloud of grief suspended above us in the Monaro�s cabin. Reggie had been the black sheep of the family and so there were no tears to be shed. I was more concerned that I would be bored stiff, excuse the pun, sitting in the back of the car and staring out at the endless tracts of houses, car yards and factories.
Fortunately, I didn�t have to worry about trying to pass the time in respectful silence. The driver solved that problem. He started out by apologising for the car. He said that if he were in charge of the company he would have more dignified vehicles � not these museum pieces, albeit exceptionally well-preserved ones. But things got really interesting when he opened up, with a little prodding from me, and began to talk about his experiences in the funeral industry. He talked about some of the truly shoddy practices of some parlours. One of these involved a small time operator who used his garage as a mortuary to prepare bodies. Another was even less savoury. He would sacrilegiously bash bodies if he was in a bad mood. The last example caused our driver to resign on the spot.
The �black� tone of the conversation lightened a little when he began to talk about his own life outside the funeral parlour. It turned out that he was the model of a successful funeral car driver. In his early twenties he drove a nice European car (when he wasn�t driving the Monaro), had a good paying job and owned property with his partner.
The mention of a partner made me increasingly curious, particularly as I noticed that as he continued to talk about his domestic life he didn�t assign a gender to his partner. Just as odd was the fact that the partner didn�t seem to possess a name. It was either �my partner� or the equally ambiguous and impersonal, �they.� Immediately I interpreted that the partner�s gender was really �he.� It seemed puzzling that the driver didn�t want to reveal that his partner was actually a he, especially as I had already outed myself on our little journey by mentioning the male pronoun when discussing my partner.
The factories, car yards and suburban houses gradually gave way to vast expanses of national park as we approached our destination. We stopped briefly to fortify ourselves on coffee and scones at a quaint little coffee house before continuing on to the church. The church was a small chapel with large paines of glass which looked out on spectacular views of the Blue Mountains. It was the perfect place for the final send-off.
Taking a seat at the first pew in the front we waited for the other mourners. But we were outnumbered. Counting the three nurses from the home up the road, one driver, one funeral assistant, one funeral director, and one priest, the actual mourners only really numbered three. The fouth mourner, or pseudo-mourner, as I prefer to call her was Gina, Reggie's former paramour. She made quite an entrance as she sachayed down the isle decked out in a tight-fitting red crotched dress, blue eyeliner and red-dyed hair styled up high on her head. I could barely contain my disgust at the shocking, sartorial, sight of this sixty-something woman. I was appropriately dressed in dark colours (smart, dark brown, open-necked shirt and black jeans) and here was this creature walking into a place of worship like she�d just come off her street corner somewhere in Kings Cross.
I knew all about Gina and I couldn�t stand her. She had (financially) bleed Reggie dry under the pretext of being his significant other. But the only significant thing about her was her appalling sense of dress. I couldn�t even bring myself to shake her hand or even offer her a single word of condolence. When Reggie had moved to the nursing home in the Blue Mountains she hadn�t even bothered to bring him his pyjamas. And when he died she wasn�t interested in helping with the funeral arrangements or even contributing something to the cost. Her only contribution today was a bunch of cheap Woollies flowers done up in tacky yellow cellophane.
Fortunately, the priest got on with the funeral and I tried not to think of Gina. The priest gave the usual service but it had a pleasant, and comforting, feeling of informality. We sung a few hymns and he gave a brief eulogy, including a reminder to us that we will all meet our maker in the end so we should get our house in order. Then he invited my brother to speak. Charle's speech was equally informal and spoken extemporaneously, mentally constructed while he had been travelling in the Monaro. The last funeral speech Charles had given had been my father�s, three months ago. It had been a heartfelt and well-spoken eulogy (carefully written in note form) which summed up my father�s life beautifully. It had been the best funeral oration, and the only funeral oration, I had attended - up to that time.This time, Charles spoke off the cuff and talked about Reggie being a simple man who liked simple pleasures. Even his black sheep status, his love of gambling, was brought up, but in a positive way. I was, again, impressed that Charles could put together such a perfectly-fitting speech, which didn�t glorify or gloss over a man�s life.
