Six Feet DOWN UNDER (Memoirs of a New Zealand Funeral Director) by Chris Mann

Author:Chris Mann [Mann, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2009-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

In April 1989, Kerrianne and I went away for a weekend and returned home on the Sunday night. Upon my return, Mum informed me that her father, my grandfather had passed away. Ron, as he preferred to be called, had been in poor health recently so his passing was no real surprise. Kerrianne and I had recently visited him in Greenlane Hospital and I was amazed to see how much he had deteriorated since I had last seen him. Mum informed me that funeral arrangements had been made with Dean. However, if I wanted to be the funeral director on the day it would be nice. I obliged, saying it was the least I could do. Ron’s funeral was held in the Catholic Church in Ellerslie and he was buried with his parents at Waikumete Cemetery. In 1980 I had an involvement in the funeral of my Nan (Ron’s wife) when she passed away. Nan’s funeral was held at the same church, I was only 10-years-old, but I accepted Mum’s offer to be an altar boy at her funeral service. I served at the altar with three other boys from the parish that I did not know. However, I possibly wasn’t much help. I spent most of the service crying. I was really, really upset. Nan was my favourite grandparent and the first to pass away. This time, with Ron’s funeral I knew I’d be fine, I was 19-years-old, a lot wiser and to be honest I wasn’t as close to Ron as I had been to Nan. Besides, guys have a knack of suppressing their emotions.

Actually, I’ve had an involvement in all of my grandparent’s funerals. As I’ve just mentioned, I was an altar boy at Nan’s funeral. Intently watching Granddad’s funeral in 1986 is what prompted me to become a funeral director in the first place. It was now 1989 and I was going to conduct Ron’s funeral as a funeral director. And in 1998, I conducted the funeral of Nana, my last grandparent.

Ron’s funeral went off without a hitch. I felt extremely proud amongst all my cousins and relations playing such an important role. Also, I thought the personal touch of having a grandchild conduct their grandparent’s funeral was a special tribute.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.