Saturday 31 January 2015

Lady in Mink


shovelling sh*t. Beloved is nothing if not to the point.

I should have had a camera handy,” he said, standing at the kitchen window, looking out, when I came in. Millie and I had been for a short walk and afterwards I grabbed a couple of hand shovels to clear up a small accumulation of detritus left by her over several days. She uses a particular area in the garden for her morning evacuations and normally I clean up after her the same day. But on cold winter mornings I like to forget. Hence the lady in mink hunting little piles this afternoon.  Hunter’s gumboots, a wooly hat pulled down low,
thick gloves, and Aunt Josephine’s mink coat completing the outfit, I was as warm as toast.



So, Millie walked, sh*t shovelled, birds fed, kitchen bin taken to the compost, meant my outdoor duties were completed for the day. I was glad to get back in. My, but that wind is cold.

As cold as a non-Quaker feels at a Quaker funeral. I had my first experience of a Quaker funeral service, which is not so different from an ordinary Quaker meeting, I understand. It didn’t help that we got lost in a maze of muddy lanes and arrived at the last minute. At one passing place (English country lanes are sometimes only a car width wide and need special passing places every so often) I imperiously flagged down a black car to ask directions and realised, horror-struck, that it was the hearse which had delivered my friend’s mortal remains to the chapel where the service was to be held. My friend’s husband, who is artistic to the point of lunacy, had given us directions which we seriously misunderstood.
Long silences were interrupted by a handful of people who felt moved to stand up and speak a few words, otherwise there was nothing except quiet contemplation. Even for a very infrequent churchgoer like me it seemed terribly bleak, lacking the comfort and reassurance of ritual. Afterwards we stood around in the biting wind (no mink coat this time) and watched the coffin lowered into the grave in silence. It was a green burial, in a field surrounding the chapel, there were no head stones, no flowers; no formal words were spoken. One of the bearers held a bowl of earth and a few people followed the family and threw a handful on to the coffin.

My friend, who suffered from Alzheimer’s for the past twelve years and whose death was, finally, a blessed relief, was a Quaker herself and she would have known many funerals such as hers. Personally, the thought of a humanist service and green burial appeals, but I would certainly like to have a little more fuss made over me, no matter how insincere. As is due to a Lady in Mink.


30 comments:

  1. It never even occurred to me to think about what a Quaker funeral would entail--of course there would be silences. *slaps head*

    I very much like your description of the power of rituals, noting that they are reassuring. This gives my brain something to think about since I, in general, chafe at rituals. So I wonder what about "reassurance" bothers me. Food for thought! Thanks, chum.

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  2. I don't know the term 'green burial' and if it's just a field and no markers, how do they know where to bury the next one? The Jews do that too, throw handfuls of dirt, or shovelfuls on the coffin. I've always liked that part and find it far more satisfying than the custome of some Christian denominations that don't even lower the casket until after all the mourners have left. I can do without all the prayers though.

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  3. If you're ever in a group of people and everyone falls silent and has nothing to say, you can say, Oh! We're playing Quaker meeting.

    Love,
    Janie

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  4. I have this wonderful vision of a lady in mink with her pooper scooper and little bag. Makes me smile -- really big! I know what you mean about a funeral that seems so bereft of warmth and comfort. Indeed, it may be what your friend wanted but sometimes I think funerals are for the living and it doesn't sound like the living felt much like doing that after leaving. Or maybe felt like doing a lot of living -- just to get back at it all! But I am indeed sorry for the loss of your friend -- no matter what the public farewell, I'm sure the private one is a bit different.

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  5. I have been to Quaker meetings but never one of the funerals. It makes sense it would be just like you described. Last month I went to a Unitarian celebration of life and it was wonderful. I arrived filled with grief and dread and left feeling light and with a smile on my face. That's what I want for myself, too. :-)

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  6. Interesting post. I have never been to a Quaker meeting or funeral.

    I love that you clean up after your dog wearing mink. I know that such fur coats are very warm. Perhaps I shall throw my grandmother's old mink wrap around me the next time I have dog duty. I dare not wear it in public. People become outraged over the sight of such coats even if the minks contributing to the mink died clear back in the 50's when such coats were acceptable.

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  7. hey, for a lady in mink shovelling shit...i think there should be plenty made...ha
    not sure i have been to a quaker funeral....

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  8. Oh, Friko, you never fail to please! It's bedtime and now I'll go to sleep with a smile on my face remembering the lady in mink.

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  9. On a recent visit
    my granddaughter asked me if she could have something I never wear anymore
    my old mink coat.
    She lives in cold N.Y. and is enjoying it.
    Wonder sometimes if I should have kept it :)

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  10. What a picture you paint, of gumboots on the lady in mink. The funeral sounds quite an ordeal. I too like the comfort of ritual, though silence is good too, in the right places.

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  11. You will be eulogized in the blogosphere. . . . but may it be long many winters and summers from now!



    ALOHA from Honolulu
    ComfortSpiral
    <3

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  12. Oh, what a perfect picture! It suits my general impression of you, you know.

    I've only had on a mink coat (full length!) one time. The village attorney let me put hers on while she told the story of how she acquired it. One of her clients couldn't pay with money, so offered the attorney her deceased mother's coat. I couldn't stop PETTING the thing. It was comfortingly heavy and I just knew that if I went out on a cold windy evening I wouldn't feel breezes coming through.
    I wonder why wearing OLD fur coats is not considered recycling....?

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  13. ja je kan nu wel een paar laarzen gebruiken.

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  14. The Scooping Pooping PickerPopple Lady in Mink n rubber boots. ha,ha. Yes, I have that chore too. The Quaker funeral sounds rather bleak. Do they have a get together after and talk about the person or cheer themselves with old stories. I have seen the bowl of earth and people taking some and dropping it on the coffin, but mostly here, they have the service at graveside and do not lower the coffin until the family has left.Very interesting service.

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  15. Hello,

    A real fur coat is the only thing to keep out Siberian chills. It is truly amazing how light and warm these coats can be and they are certainly de rigeur in Budapest. And, how stylish to be wearing one to do a little dog housekeeping in. Fabulous!

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  16. If I should go soon to that heavenly haven anytime soon, Friko, please write my obit. I know of no one who has a way with words such as yourself. You make me chuckle (okay, I laugh) and you force me to ponder life, for which I am grateful.
    I'm sorry for your friend, though a blessing, for certain.
    Off I go to help Tom plow today's big snow - as soon as I find my mink.

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  17. Friko, I enjoyed picturing the ritual that you and Millie performed, and then reading your description of the Quaker funeral. You've linked the two very well.

    xo

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  18. Love reading about, what you up to, Friko ... scooping and burying ... anything ... smiles ... Always, cat.

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  19. I can see the weather is affecting you. Keep that upper lip stiff if it isn't frozen. I am still wondering what you do with the stuff after you shovel it.

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  20. That's why I don't want a funeral. Cremate me and scatter my ashes someplace pretty or where they'll do some good--like a garden. Nothing somber for me. I hope to leave them laughing and smiling. :) And your mink and boots and pooper scooper has me smiling right now, BTW! ;)

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  21. I took an online religion quiz once. I'm pretty sure it said that I should be a Quaker. Maybe it said Shaker. Anyway, it didn't work.

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  22. Having horses, shoveling sh*t is something I am good at. I also can use it as a meditation and time for reflection. Just the wheelbarrow, the poop, the manure fork, and me. It helps clear my mind of clutter and accomplishes the necessary.

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  23. I got to be rather good at shovelling when we had a dog who would only use the sheltered side of the house each day.
    A Quaker funeral certainly sounds very dull, was there not even a single hymn? I'm not sure how I'd like people to react when I go, there isn't going to be a funeral, I'm leaving my body to the medical teaching hospital for research and learning.

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  24. My mother never had a mink coat, but she had something very middle-western-America: muskrat. It really was a beautiful coat, and warm as could be. Eventually, she stopped wearing it because it was just too heavy for her little frame. Instead of the coat wearing out, it wore her out. So, she gave it to a creative friend who cut it up and created three teddy bears out of it. I think they finally gave them to a charity that provides teddy bears to kids in hospitals.

    I'm not sure we "knew each other" when my mother died. I wrote about it, because it was the most perfect funeral ever. She was cremated, and her knitting group knit a wonderful bag to put the box in. Then, they all wrote a farewell note and plunked those into the bag, too. I took her up to Iowa for burial next to dad, and when my aunt saw the knitted bag, she said, "Oh! That's good. She's got a sweater. She always was cold!" I put her into the grave myself, and then the whole family went to our favorite cafe and had hamburgers, fries, and chocolate shakes. The perfect funeral.

    I think you must be quite fetching in your mink and boots -- just leave the real "fetching" to Millie.

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  25. I love the picture you've written for us of you on your frozen hillside in a mink coat and big boots. You really could be Canadian, you know.

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  26. I've never met any Quakers (do we have them here in Germany at all, I wonder?), let alone been to any of their meetings or funerals. But I have been to my first ever Roman Catholic funeral in December. One of my oldest friend's mother had died. It was all very strange and new to me, such as the reading out of a long list of names of Saints. As I come from a protestant family (although I do not belong to any organized religion anymore ever since I was 15 or 16), the funerals I have been to up until then were either non-religious or after the protestant fashion, where the concept of saints does not exist.
    I very much agree with you about the reassurance of rituals.

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  27. Haven't been here for a while - glad to see you are still blogging away! Looks like your weather is a lot worse than mine - here the bugs are out already. Happy webbing -

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  28. I suppose funerals will become more common as time goes by and, I along with my friends, get to "that age". I don't know many religious people. They are becoming thankfully rare in these parts nowadays. The last few funerals I have been to have been humanist, the most recent involving a reading from Buddha and some Jimi Hendrix followed by tea and an enormous variety of cakes in a local pub; cakes made by friends and other members of the Thursday Cake Club of which the deceased was a founder member. I think that is the kind of thing I would want. Only I will make the beer in advance.

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  29. When my mother in law died, she was cremated and my husband and his sister flew back to her home town, bearing the urn of ashes wrapped in a mink coat. There was a memorial service and then the siblings took a long bumpy boat ride in Tampa Bay in order to strew her ashes more or less where her husband's had been strewn (from a friend's plane) several years before. It was a blustery day and when they attempted to strew the ashes on the waves, the ashes blew back all over them. There's glory for you.

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  30. I think a lot of my life has been involved with shovelling s**t:) From babies, to animals, to cleaning bathrooms. Why do so few men clean the loo? Never done it in mink though!

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