The emotions, rituals and symbols at funerals

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regonal newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

Queen Elizabeth is dead. Long live the king. The monarch of 70 years has been buried. It has been a long farewell. I am a regular listener to BBC Radio 4 and I watch UK news programmes. I dip in and out of the digital version of the Guardian newspaper. It’s been interesting keeping an eye on how Britain has mourned its monarch.

When Queen Elizabeth came to Ireland on her State visit I was certainly touched by the pictures relayed back to my house on the television screen.

And then that famous handshake and pleasant words between Queen Elizabeth and Martin McGuinness had to move the soul of the hardest and most cynical of people.

 

It might well be unwise, even inappropriate right now to say one negative word about the funeral of the late English monarch. And I never know the official title. Is Charles the King of England or the King of the United Kingdom? All titles confuse me, indeed, I have problems with all titles and top of the list are monsignor, right reverend etc.

But what I cannot understand is the idea that people would queue for 24 hours to pay their respects to a monarch and a good monarch at that. One moment people are in deep sorrow about the death of Queen Elizabeth, the next moment they are screaming in jubilation with their new King Charles.

British media was non-stop for many days reporting on the death of the queen and the days of mourning.

Two days before the actual burial I was talking to a wise man who argued that symbols are important in the lives of people and he saw all that was happening as steeped in our need for symbolic gestures.

It made me think about the seven Sacraments and how they are all couched in symbolic meaning. Have you ever asked yourself what the word symbol means?

It has to do with representation, pointing to something, standing for something. Symbols bring things together.

And then I went off thinking how easy it is to manipulate us human beings. Given the ‘correct’ situation, the right climate we can all be worked up into a frenzy. And most times it confuses me and also scares me. 

Observing Trump followers screaming and roaring at the man baffles me. But is that because I don’t like Trump? If I were a Trump fan how might I react? 

When I see any sort of over-the-top adulation or frenzy my mind goes back to those days in 1940 when Hitler returned from Paris and drove through Berlin. The crowds went berserk at their conquering master. 

Hero worship is dangerous. I know someone who cried at the funeral of Charlie Haughey. I don’t think she ever met him. There must be something in our soul that can drive us to behaviour way beyond our understanding. 

I’m beginning to think that pageantry has a powerful DNA in it that when it touches us it can do all sorts of strange things with us. 

Maybe once we start saying someone is special and different from the rest of people we are on the slippery slope creating our own idols. We are all special.