Last Orders

„ … it’s a privilege, to my mind, an education. You see humankind at its weakest and its strongest. You see it stripped bare of its everday concerns when it can’t help but take itself serious, when it needs a little wrapping up in solemness and ceremony. But it doesn’t do for an undertaker to get too solemn. That why a joke’s not out of place. That’s why I say: Vic Tucker, at your disposal.

It’s not a trade many will choose. You have to be raised to it, father to son. It runs in a family, like death itself runs in the human race, and there’s comfort in that. The passing on. It’s not what you’d call a favoured occupation. But there’s satisfaction and pride to it. You can’t run a funeral without pride. When you step out and slow-pace in front of the hearse, in your coat and hat and gloves, you can’t do it like your apologizing. You have to make happen at that moment what the bereaved and bereft want to happen. You have to make the whole world stop and take notice.”

 Graham Swift: Last Orders