There is No 'Fun' in 'Funeral'

CW- funerals; death; Paris/Syria;

It was the funeral earlier this week. We all went to Brighton, where my uncle lived. Some of the family stayed with his friends, and some of us- including me- stayed in the flat. We are calling it 'the flat', or 'Brunswick' now. That's not what it used to be called. It used to be called 'Matt's'. I've been getting caught up on tenses recently. Does a flat stop belonging to someone, just because they are no longer there? The deed, or whatever it is- the rent? I don't know- is still in his name. Is it still his, if he's no longer around for it to be his anymore?

Another language thing that's annoying me is the word 'funeral'. It begins with the word 'fun'. There is nothing 'fun' about funerals. There is just sadness, and silence, and staring at the clouds and trying not to cry. There is the lurch in your stomach as you realise what is in the casket in front of you, and there's the pain of watching the people you love hurting so much. There's loss. There's watching your family gather, as they have so many times before- and being hit with the realisation that you will never gather in the same way again. We are not a complete unit anymore. There is no 'fun' in 'funeral'.

I am really glad about where he is buried, though. It's in the hills above Brighton. If you walk a bit to the side you can see the sea, and, though dogs aren't allowed in the burial site itself, there's lots of hills and fields to walk them over. It's perfect, really. Or as perfect as this can be, in such an imperfect and utterly wrong scenario.

So yes, the funeral was sad, and we all cried a lot. In a way it was a relief. You're allowed to be sad at funerals. You're not allowed to be sad in Law or Sociology, or when you're meant to be getting on with life. Definitely not when what feels like the rest of the world is getting ready to celebrate the happiest time of the year. A funeral is not fun, it is sad, but that can be a relief. It was nice to hear and read stories about Matt, and to meet people we've only heard about, or seen on Facebook. It was nice to see how loved he was. It was difficult. But it was not impossible.

I think that's enough about funerals. I want to talk about Brighton instead. I fell in love with Brighton this week. Not that it took much. Brighton is full of the things I love: the sea, and the sky, and bright lights, and lots of interesting places to explore. Does that make me callous, that I was able to enjoy Brighton so much? I don't think it does, I think it makes me human. I am incredibly thankful for Brighton, actually, because, for me, it made it a lot easier. I walked a lot by the beach, which was beautiful, and it was a wonderful reminder that there is still beauty in the world.

There is a lot of juxtaposition in this world. 'Juxtaposition' is a noun that means 'the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect'. Thank you Google. Juxtaposition came up in GCSE English Literature a lot, and I use it sometimes in my writing. Life seems to use it a lot, too. There was juxtaposition in Brighton- the overwhelming amount of love, but also the huge and unending loss. The pain being felt by everyone, but also the beauty of Brighton, which was in itself a sort of painful. It feels like the whole of the past few months have been juxtaposition. It has been a weird time for us all. Just when Matt got really ill, when it seemed like the end, was when the attacks in Paris happened. That felt like juxtaposition, sort of, because it was this close pain and this really far away pain. The day that Matt died, the government made a decision on bombing Syria, and that was another weird sort of juxtaposition- a huge weird mixture of grief and sadness and anger, for everything and nothing. My GCSE English Literature teacher might disagree that those examples are juxtaposition- but GCSE English Literature does not always equate to life, and I know that the way those events made me feel is the way juxtaposition makes me feel.

There has been other juxtaposition, too. The past few weeks have brought some of the happiest news I have ever received. I was named on Rife Magazine's '24 Influential Bristolians Under 24' list. I completed the fundraising challenge I have been working on all year. I received achievable offers from all of my universities, including the one I am really excited about, the one I thought would laugh at my application. There have been other happy times, laughing and smiling with friends. All juxtaposed against everything else that's going on. It has been such a weird time. A very very weird time. Isn't life weird?