Funeral For a Fish

I was maybe seven or eight years old, on holiday camping in Austria with my family. Nothing glamorous,  a six man tent and a Bedford van full of disgruntled children. It was wet, seriously wet. My dad had resorted to digging a moat around the tent with his trusty World War Two folding trenching tool in an attempt to keep our bedding dry.

I had made chums with a little German girl. We didn't speak each other's language, but we hung out  together by the shores of a lake. One day  I spied a plastic bag which had something in it washed up on the lake shore. On closer inspection I saw the something was a fish. My eight-year-old heart felt pain, this looked like an ignominious way to end your fishy life, sealed inside in a plastic bag drowning in air.  I decided that the fish needed a funeral, a proper send off. I told my family what I had found and what intended to do.

I later dug a hole and with great solemnity, and with my German friend enlisted as fellow mourner beside me, I said some words over the fish and wished it’s spirit well and sent it on its way. This whole scene was witnessed by my giggling older siblings hiding behind a nearby bush.

My 8-year-old self realised an instinctive  need to respect a life, to mark a death.  I've never forgotten that instinct, and have always been fascinated by rites of passage, in ours and other cultures. Of course being a of course being a celebrant was not even a speck on my horizon then, but that need continued. When I am leading a coffin in at the crematorium or standing with a family by a graveside, the same impulse is there,  The 8-year-old I was is still present in the 62 year old woman I am, still wanting to respect all life, all loss.