DEATH IS NOT THE END

I was going to write that death is funny and weird buts its not. Its life that is funny and weird. Death is predictable, well kind of and natural. To live is to die (eventually). Of course, no one knows when or how. Well, someone does but he ain’t saying!

At certain times when I am working with glass and things don’t go exactly to plan the glass breaks. How it breaks and where can be vital in order for me to carry out an effective repair. Can’t do that with life can you? Of course, you can. That’s what’s hospitals and doctors are for. Prolonging life and it some cases making living tortures unbearable when the patient just wants to die. I have repaired a lot of cracked and broken glass in my career but never have I fixed a broken soul.

I imagine that the intensity I feel when working in the flame on a complex item of glass is shared with a surgeon performing a life-or-death operation on a much-loved person. Of course, two totally different scenarios but the idea of shared focuses and concepts remains similar. It can be nerve tingling mind blowing painful to work on hot glass trying desperately to limit any cracking. There is a common bond with life and glass in that both are unpredictable.

Of all the glass shapes I have made I think the coffin shape is most striking. It may appear different when viewing it from the inside but as a creative spirit then making one from glass is challenging. I don’t mean a full size one but a small replica. I mean we all know what a coffin looks like so if I make a square glass box and call it a coffin then people will feel cheated. I have no idea who designed the first coffin, but I hope they held a patent as they would be rich beyond one’s wildest dreams by now. Mind you just a tweak here and there and this would change the design to make each coffin unique. After all its contents will definitely be unique. I did fancy once being buried in a full-size glass coffin so everyone at my funeral could verify that it was me inside an don’t a sack of redundant lifesaving equipment and the odd kitchen utensil!

So where does all this glass and death leave us? Well, a good friend died. He was a glassblower and a famous one at that. Awarded the MBE and I learnt a lot from him. Now when ever anyone I know dies then I wait for details of the funeral. People refer to funerals as a celebration of life but how can it be when the main star of funerals ain’t alive? Surely its best to celebrate life when we are all living? Funerals are for dead people and in the situation, I refer to, my friend had died so a funeral would bound to follow. It did and typical the date set was when I would be on holiday. I did think of cancelling the holiday to attend the funeral. Sometimes people who attend these functions do so for their own glory and not for any religious or symbolic manner. I wanted to feel good about my friend dying and I felt bad because I couldn’t mourn with others at his funeral. It was especially galling when his daughter told me that her dad who died respected my glasswork and thought I was skilled. Man, I was gutted! I have made a lot of glassware for my friend and will continue to do so as a kind of tribute.

Two days after my friend’s funeral I missed two funerals for same reason. I was on holiday and couldn’t attend my Brother-in-Laws funeral. I had been waiting for weeks after he died to see if the funeral could be arranged just before I went away on my holiday. Alas it was not to be. Did anyone miss me? I think so as someone phoned me up to ask where I was as they expected to see me there. That’s the trouble there is so much pressure to attend funerals that its enough to make all guests cut their throats. Wow what a mass funeral that would be.

On the same day as my Brother-in-Laws funeral was the Father-in-Law of another friend but his funeral was one of those humanist affairs where a person’s life really is sung about almost to the exclusion of mentioning the fact that the person is dead. I suppose ideally would be to have your own funeral when you are alive so you can enjoy it. Then when you die, just phone the local council to take away your body in a bin liner!

I have personal experience of death with, in 2005 my wife died, then my fourteen-year-old niece and then to top the year off my dad died. About six years ago my Sister-in-Law died then about three or four years ago my sister and my Mum died. There is an element of boredom in all this which is not a popular emotion to express at sombre times, but I feel it’s true.

One of my greatest accomplishments with glass is the creating of an installation of glass figures dancing around my wife’s grave. I then made a glass car to celebrate the death of a boy racer and photographed this on a headstone in my local cemetery. I love that place. So peaceful and tidy. I wonder if all the bodies emerge from the ground every week to cut the grass.

I even made a glass flame type sculpture to place on my wife’s grave and it lasted about five years. I realised that there is a lot of sentimentality over death and burials. It can be a devasting occurrence and one which I know for certain I will never “get over it”. Best I can do is to cope and sometimes this is easier than at other times. Death is not weird its crazy, absolutely crazy, and beautiful both at the same time.