Life is shit

And then you die

You may have noticed that my usual sweary narky wee self hasn’t been about for a wee while.

I have a huge wheen of reasons but not least of which was the death of one of my closest and dearest friends.

It truly knocked me for six.

Yet, over the past six years I have witnessed the death of my father, my aunt, my uncle, my niece, my three younger sisters, and four of my oldest friends.

Jings, you would think by now I would be an old hand at this death and grieving lark, but it cuts through you like a knife. A blade straight to your heart.

Interestingly I think the pain you feel is completely self-centred. We always say things like “at least he or she [ there are no other pronouns in my book] anyway we always say that the person is at peace”. And then we go to the funeral, we cry, we say nice things. We leave the funeral home saddened and continue on to the, what we Scots call the ‘purvey’.

The purvey normally has some sort of food in abundance but that is really just there to mop up the enormous amount of booze which is about to be necked.

It is always a surprise to me to discover, the day after a Scottish funeral, that no-one appears to have died of alcohol poisoning.

But a purvey is very much a time of joy, of regaling one another with the stories we have of the precious dead one, of laughter, of tears, of fighting over inanities ; I once saw three sisters tearing at each other’s hair and clothes as they fought over their dead mother’s sweater collection. It is a cleansing of the sadness and a time of letting go. By doing this act of grieving, laughing, story telling we exorcise the grief.

The collective makes it real.

What we suffer is the finality, the knowing that this person is gone out of your life forever and cannot be resurrected to amuse or educate you or just to give you a hug but the acknowledgment of that finality collectively allows us to begin the processes of acceptance. Grief shared truly is grief halved.

Shit happens.

But learning how to accept it and move on is the essence of life.

Actually I once saw one of those ‘super yachts’ sailing about in the turquoise waters of Turkey, and as it sailed majestically by where we were jumping off our hired fishing boat I noticed it’s name blazoned on its side, or whatever the fuck the nautical term is for a yacht’s side is.

Anyhoo , this hugely magnificent and expensive extravaganza of sea-faring self indulgence was named “ Ship Happens”.

Which was funny but also insulting at one and the same time. Sort of like rubbing your face in the shit while laughing at you.

Ah, yes, the Auld socialist in me always has to rear up, Ah canny help masell.

But ‘Ship Happens’ sailed smoothly on and we were left playing in the water , having a barbecue of freshly caught crab and a salad of the most beautifully pungent rocket, and finding the most enormous pleasure in our friendship.

So I suppose I am saying that Shit really does Happen but it moves on, and if you are lucky you are left still enjoying and making the most of life.

Not like me to be so philosophical. But dinnae worry, I will be back to my Auld sweary self the morra.