Nice dress, high heels, straight hair, bare nails, red lips. Lashes of waterproof mascara. You could swim 10Ks through a storm in this stuff and it still wouldn’t come off. This week a calm sea of Young and Old came together to say Goodbye.

For the last good number of visits, we’d be chatting about events and travel and anything we could possibly think of when she’d interrupt us: I want to die she’d say. We’d kick-up, straight back: You cannot say that to us! Don’t say that to us! But it was important she let us know and so we let her go. We’d pause for a while after that. Then she’d pipe up with something, tell me she really liked my green top, or, hands moving up and down, smile while she reminded us how we used to be this high and now we’re this high. And we’d grab her an Up&Go and conversation would roll on with wet faces and acid in the back of our throats.

She was surrounded by the constant love and care of a family of Sons, Wives, Grandchildren and Friends, but she was without her own Man by her side for too many years. So against a backdrop of stained glass, wood and stone, a man speaking on behalf of his band of brothers made us reflect on a good and eventful life – the best bits, the toughest bits and the funniest bits.

I’d written some of this post before the service. I didn’t want to finish it, I wanted to go through the experience and see what happened, what inspired the rest. Maybe a profound moment of emotion that moved… But no, it turns out my material was me being a little weirdo instead.

I stood up in front of the microphone and introduced myself before I began saying my farewell. I’d put so much focus on keeping my head on straight, voice steady and eyes dry that my body took the full weight of the force: it started shaking, like really shaking. My voice stood solid and words came out as they should, but the rest of me was literally out of my control. I was like one of those little wooden artists’ mannequins that someone had taken a hammer to hard at every limb. I thought I was going to have to stop and take my shoes off. I’ve never experienced a sensation like it before and it was difficult and intense but I had to get through it. We all laughed about it after, but with certainty I didn’t imagine I’d do something at my Nan’s funeral that we could later reflect on as being hilarious. I’ll speak at funerals again, that’s almost inevitable, and I rattled enough at this one to cover any more to come.

So there was that, then there was the encounter with a distant relative I’d never met who approached me at the wake to first discuss in detail the state of public transport in the city before going on to ask me if there was anyone special in my life. When I answered no, he stared me down with laser eyes and rephrased and repeated the question, this time putting great emphasis on the no one part. By this stage, with the grief, the shaking extravaganza and the general emotional exhaustion, I felt like I might transcend into a state of high trauma. I said I needed to eat some tiny sandwiches and politely removed myself from the conversation.

I didn’t cry there. I cried hard before and after.

A death is for us all a finite mortal reminder. It shifts our perspective and at the same time that we mourn the loss of a loved one we also think about our own lives and how we are living them: what we’re doing well, what we could be doing better, what we want to do but aren’t. Sometimes it changes the lives of the ones who live forever and sometimes time passes and we settle back into routine and days roll on as they always did. Then comes the news of another one passed and again, our focus rocks back to the fragile fault line between life and death.

It’s hard to see your Dad down like that. But it’s good to see the relief felt for a woman who was ready to rest and to witness all that love pour out through sadness and thanks. We grieve the dead, and we grieve for those who live and have lost someone so close to their heart.