Roll Out the Barrel

So here we are at whatever this is supposed to be, this assembly in the presence of the dead body which isn't actually a funeral service, or any kind of service. The body is on the other side of the wall. We're in a room with windows at one end. There are blinds on the windows, on the other side, but if we look through we can just about make out industrial fittings, pipes, whatever it is you would find at a crematorium.

She asked that only the Beer Barrel Polka be played at her funeral, and that song alone. Nevertheless there was a meeting at which the playlist was discussed, because there's a playlist, I suppose on the grounds that this isn't actually a funeral. It's just the six of us stood in a room at the crematorium with the mortal remains of someone we knew presumably going up in flames nearby.

The woman who took it upon herself to organise all of this, who called the meeting to discuss the playlist, stands with her smartphone held aloft so we can all hear the songs coming from its tinny speaker. I don't recognise any of them except for Roll Out the Barrel bashed out on a piano, the only one which means anything and which could be said to apply to the deceased. Roll Out the Barrel is preceded by four or five other numbers sounding suspiciously like Christian country, a genre I would gnaw through my forearm to avoid. The saccharine is so pronounced that I can feel my arteries harden as we listen, or rather as we are subjected to it. It actually feels like a violation. I move to the back of the room and take a seat so as to get as far as possible from the sound.

The woman with the phone wears a smile of priorities I cannot begin to imagine. Somehow, this death has been all about her.

I sit at the back with my head in my hands to blot out what is happening, and I think about the woman who died, and who deserved better than this.