Do not post gentle into that good night

Just this past weekend, something happened that hasn't happened in a long time. A member of Demeter's church died -- and they held an in-person memorial service. 

Imagine that. Someone dies, and family and friends gather together to mourn, remember, and comfort each other. 

I was imagining this last March, when I attended my first online funeral. 

It was for a cousin I'd never met, except online. We got in touch about 15 years ago, because she and I were researching similar branches of Demeter's ancestors in Carmarthenshire. We'd been in regular contact ever since, and I followed her posts on Facebook -- until they became more impersonal, veering into the "inspirational" memes that have become so wearisome on social media. In between these postings, I gathered that doctor appointments and hospital stays were taking up more of her time. 

Finally, one February morning, I awoke to a message from her son, posted on her account, to let her "Facebook friends" know she was gone. She had posted memes and prayers up until a day or so before her death. I contacted her son with the usual inadequate words, and a few weeks later, received the link for her funeral. 

So it was that I found myself rising before dawn, to attend a funeral that, Google Maps showed me, was taking place in a crematorium set off a lonely road near Llanelli. 

Our computer is sluggish, and it took some while to log on. They were in the middle of the first hymn, when I made it, viewing the proceedings as if tucked up into the right corner of the back wall. 

The priest was that most unfortunate of creatures, a Welshman unable to sing on key. Of course, he was the one person who was miked, so it was his voice I heard, accompanied by a pre-recorded choir. 

From my virtual perch in the back corner, I couldn't see if the congregation was singing. There were about a dozen mourners in well-spaced clumps, all masked, all dressed in grey or black, with the backs of their black or grey heads facing toward me. 

It was an antiseptic room with a grey carpet. The windows behind the priests looked out over dull green hills rising to a grey sky. 

I was startled to see a coffin (also grey), because my cousin had died over a month before. Towards the end of the service, held in English and Welsh, a semi-circular gauzy curtain was drawn about the stand where the coffin lay, followed shortly by a taupe-coloured opaque curtain. 

I hope there was some comfort in the hymns and readings, clearly chosen by a family familiar with the Anglican liturgy - my cousin's widower is a Church-in-Wales priest. Bowed and huddled, he was supported out of the room by his two sons as the other mourners followed, and my view into the scene was snapped off. 

I thought about the service my cousin would have wanted: in the accustomed surroundings of her parish church, candles, a real choir, pews filled with family and friends. 

So bleak. So grey. 

Michael Sheen is just finishing a run at the National Theatre in a production of Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, which, normally, does not feature the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". It seems an appropriate tribute to my cousin, however, whose life had more colour than her muted send-off would imply.