I got invited to a funeral last month, if you can call that sort of thing an invitation. My friend’s elderly mother died after six months of sliding down hill. Like a lot of us, my friend had a complicated relationship with her mother. Apparently, Mom was a real show stopper: an actress with a flare for drama. Great on stage, I suppose, not so great if you craved June Cleaver at the supper table.
Seriously, if anyone else dies in this family I’m going to the funeral. Because there was terrific singing, and a knockout eulogy, and all sorts of family members standing up to tell funny stories. One young woman recounted a performance given by her grandmother at a family picnic. Dressed to the nines, she’d strolled onto the lawn and recited the following poem. It made me LOVE a woman who could be, as my friend would tell you, very difficult to love. What a terrific role model for her granddaughters.
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
and learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
