GRUMBLES

By R.C. Tino Bella*

Dear Editor, Re: “Grumbles”

(2023) 81 Advocate 450

Mr. Justice Grauer’s “Grumble”, in the most recent edition of the Advocate, refers, if only obliquely, to the fact that I have lived through five monarchies, while the editor gratuitously observes that I am older than I look. One of the misfortunes of growing old is that as the years rush by, you find yourself attending more and more funerals. Your friends keep dying. I seem to have an ever-decreasing circle of acquaintances, and I always feel obliged to go to their funerals.

Yogi Berra, the sage of the baseball fraternity, put it best: “If you don’t go to peoples’ funerals, they won’t come to yours.”

These past few months, I have written two obituaries and delivered one eulogy. When an old friend dies, I live in fear that I will be asked to deliver a eulogy. It is not so much that I have difficulty thinking of what to say. After all, I spent my working life speaking in public, so I ought to be used to it. The problem is that I never attend a funeral without shedding a tear. Normally that wouldn’t matter. Nobody would notice. But it is different when I am on my feet, even with the comfort of a lectern between me and the congregation. The first time I delivered a eulogy was on the occasion of the funeral of a dear and very old friend. He had been a Provincial Court judge and the church was overflowing with people I knew. His widow asked me to “Say a few words”— “Make it brief, David, and not too serious.”

Well, in the event, I ran on for about 20 minutes. Then, unrehearsed, I decided to end with the closing words of Hamlet.

* Grumbles may be e-mailed to <mbain@the-advocate.ca>. Grumbles published do not necessarily reflect the views of the Advocate or its staff. We encourage a diversity of voices and views in our pages.

There cracks a noble heart. Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

I choked on the angels. Then, sometime later, I ran across an old African saying: When an old man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.

So much wisdom is lost.

So, I used that saying as an introduction to the next two eulogies I was enlisted to deliver as well as the Hamlet quotation in closing. I felt somewhat of a fraud, using the same quotation each time. It felt somehow insincere. I felt vaguely obligated to come up with something different each time, something unique for my departed friend. But the quotations were so apt on each occasion and I was careful to note if there were people present that had heard me say these things at an earlier funeral. In the event, only members of my own family would hear me repeat myself, and I knew they would forgive me—and if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.

Funerals are rites of passage. I find it difficult to analyze why they are important. Although I don’t like attending funerals, I feel I somehow owe it to my erstwhile friend to come and say goodbye. It annoys me when I read a death notice of an old friend in the newspaper and it ends “ No funeral by request of the deceased”. “Damn it!” I think. They have no business denying us all the liberty to come and say goodbye. It’s just not right.

What if, for instance, Queen Elizabeth II had left a will that said “No funeral, by royal command.” What a shock that would be to the nation. One would suppose that the family would hastily bury the request. I read somewhere that the queen had largely planned her own funeral. And it is obvious that those plans had been in waiting for a good many years. Nobody could have possibly come up with that magnificent piece of theatre in the few days between her death and her interment. It was so with Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral. He planned it himself and a long time before he died.

I watched both those funerals on television—I, in West Vancouver, the funerals in London. There were two moments of theatre, one in each funeral that brought a tear to my eye.

Churchill’s service in St Paul’s Cathedral had ended. His coffin was carried out to the gun carriage and taken down to the Thames to be put on a barge, which was to take it up-river to Woodstock, where he was to be buried alongside his ancestors. As the barge slowly made its way upstream, past the docks, all the cranes along the river dipped their arms in salute as the funeral barge went past. It was a touching gesture.

Eight guardsmen carried Queen Elizabeth’s coffin out of Westminster Abby to a hearse, which drove it to Windsor, where she was to be buried in St George’s Chapel, beside her husband. Her coffin was taken out of the hearse and placed on a gun carriage at the beginning of the Royal Mile that leads through Windsor Park up to the castle. That mile was lined with a crowd of her citizens, all come to bid her goodbye. But close to the castle, the common populace was replaced by her retainers and familiars. The television camera panned those who knew her well, standing along the last furlong of the Royal Mile. It came upon her two corgis, cheerfully wagging their tails. But then came the spectacle of a little black pony, a groom holding its bridle. The Queen’s pony. Standing quietly and patiently watching as the cortege passed by.

David Roberts, K.C. West Vancouver

I indeed made an egregious error (actually overlooked in editing, therefore I could cover it off as a mere typographical error) by suggesting that David Roberts’s second monarch during his lifetime would have been “His Majesty King Edward VI” when it clearly should have been “His Majesty King Edward VIII” (our late great Queen’s uncle). This error was clearly mine so you do not owe me any apology for that error.

Dear Editor,

Re: “Grumbles”

(2023) 81 Advocate 450

I notice that the “Grumbles” column in the May 2023 edition of the Advocate is entirely taken up by two letters plus an editor’s note from yourself about the egregious error that they found in my letter to you, which you kindly had published in the January 2023 edition.

However, you do now owe an apology to Advocate readers because in your editor’s note, you have compounded my initial error by saying that it should have read “His Majesty King Edward VII”. No, that is wrong as well but off only one numeral from my original error, which was off two numerals. The King involved was the eighth Edward and not either the sixth (my original error) or the seventh (your editor’s error). The seventh Edward was of course the greatgreat grandfather of our new King, His Majesty King Charles III, and was the oldest son of Queen Victoria. He succeeded to the throne in 1901 and died in 1910, and we know that Mr. Roberts cannot be that old!

I do appreciate your effort to clarify this error and somehow give me some cover. However, the initial error is all my own and I caused this whole problem in the first place! In an earlier letter to you, which you also kindly published, I believe I had complained about the fact the “Grumbles” column seemed to have disappeared. I am delighted it is back and that ironically it was provoked by something I said in a letter to you!

[From time to time, we intentionally place errors in our musings to see if readers are paying attention. This was not such an occasion, therefore:

“Off with our heads!” – Ed.]

Best regards, Mike Donison West

Kelowna