Like a flower

Today we went to the funeral of an 85-year-old neighbour. We are very solidaire about funerals in our village; everyone who can turns out, not just family and close friends, so there were something like 200 people gathered in the square.

When we first moved here I was a bit taken aback by the funerals. Nobody other than immediate family dresses up for them; they just come in their work clothes. At the appointed hour, most of the women go into the church, and virtually all the men stand around in the square chatting about anything and everything while the service goes on. Then everyone goes to the cemetery together.

Joseph had obsèques civiles though. So no church service was involved; from the house the procession, led by Jérôme carrying the mairie's republican flag, went to the Mairie and then the cemetery, where a grandson read a eulogy.

Joseph left Spain during the Retirada in 1936, at the age of 12. He grew up and made a life here, marrying a fellow refugee he met at a local village ball. Throughout his life he kept his gravelly Spanish accent: "Tout-es lez lettres sont fait-es pour être prononcé-es", he used to say. Which they are in Spanish. Self-taught and determined, he achieved his school diploma after only 18 months in France, and ended up managing one of the local wine domains; I learned today that he acted as écrivain public for the illiterate workers in the village, both French and Spanish.

As people with no links to the village move into the new developments on the outskirts, I suppose funerals like this will become a thing of the past. People will no longer have grown up with all of their neighbours.

This is all rather melancholy! And these flowers reminded me of Purcell's lovely Man that is born of Woman, performed at the funeral of Queen Mary:

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and ne'er continueth in one stay.