My funeral

Travelling to a friend's funeral this week set me thinking.

We haven't seen this friend for a year or two, and yet we travelled to her funeral. It was less than two and a half hours' journey; why had we left it so long? And then I thought of all the other people I love but whom I haven't seen for a while. A couple of days ago,  I was speaking to a close friend I haven't seen for about two years, and we both agreed that we would certainly go to each other's funerals.
So why leave it until then? I have resolved to see more of my friends as soon as possible. While we're all still alive.

 As for my own funeral, I'd like to hold it now. While I'm still around to enjoy it. A kind of pre-funeral; putting the fun back into funerals. Why not? I could even start a business....

No flowers by request...

...look like this, and I think it's terribly sad. People speak of "wasted money", but buying beautiful flowers for a funeral are the last thing friends and family can do for the dead person. In a way, many of us need to do just that; to express our feelings in this way. I'm all for charitable donations, but they can be given in addition - why not? At my late husband's funeral, we had mountains of flowers, and they meant so much. At my mother's, we had lots of sprays and bouquets, and everyone took some home.

So, at my funeral - lots of flowers, please (no wreaths. if you don't mind), and please take some home when you go.

(I was put in mind of this while attending a funeral last week. The coffin was a woven  one, with lots of flowers interwoven along the edge, and a huge bouquet on top. I'd like to go to my Maker in a basket, too. It was beautiful, and much less bleak than a coffin.)

"Write what you know"...?

Of course, writing what you know can mean two things: writing based on pesonal experience, and writing what you know about, which presumably can include research (eg for historical fiction), and second-hand experience. Sci-fi and fantasy are different again; more imagination, perhaps, but still some experience (of feelings, emotions, behaviour etc).

I think I tend to write from personal experience. Because I've worked closely with people most of my life - nursing, couselling - I am fascinated by relationships, and I suppose they lie at the root of all my novels (that also explains why I'm hopeless at writing about crime. I've been there, and failed). But looking at my writing, I seem to have a preoccupation with death - there are funerals* in all my books - and this has happened almost unconsciously. Some years ago, my parents, in-laws and husband all died within ten years, and I'm sure now that all those deaths - all those funerals, all that grief, and all coming in such rapid succession - have infiltrated my writing, although I never set out to write about the experience, except in my first book (and I suppose first novels tend to be the most personal, because the first is the one that was been brewing for all those years when one was saying "I think I'll write a novel some day..."). For my next novel, maybe I should deliberately exclude all funerals, just to see if I can...

*Animal funerals, to, but I've blogged about those before!