Nickie Muir: Grief and loss strike at funeral

The pohutukawa is in its first tentative reddening along the coast on the way to the funeral.

An unlikely time for tangi - I pass several tourists' wedding cars on the way down.

It seems funny to me that my Anglo roots have prepared me well for knowing what's right and good to say at weddings and christenings - the seasons of plenty and blessings but have equipped me poorly for knowing what to say and do in the seasons of loss.

Having lived in Northland for 15 years I've often thought that the cultural threads that tie people together in Te Ao Maori seem, to me at least, to have the rituals of passing down to a much finer art.

I've often wondered in leaving the shores of the countries my ancestors left behind whether there was a loss of threads tying our soul life to soil and very little knowledge (or perhaps willingness?) to learn how to weave from the fibres of the new.

The church must have kept much of this spiritual life together for early settlers but in an increasingly secular world - where our consumer society often only acknowledges or celebrates accumulation - what do we do in our seasons of loss?

Weird things happen at funerals and nerves and patience easily fray.

There are the spiritual vampires that, having not shown up or shown an interest for years, will suddenly (and inappropriately) claim that they see some long lost husband or lover waiting for them on the other side, regardless of the fact that they are telling this to the children of another partner.

The local random (chemist, alternative therapist) will get up and claim they had in fact diagnosed an illness years ago and if only everyone had listened the deceased would still be alive today.

Even though none of the family members that have cared for the patient every day have ever met them.

I offer my "Invisible Shopping Bag of Silence" to my cousin. Picture a brown paper grocery shopping bag with the eyes cut out but no ears or mouth. Place on head.

You can see people but you can't hear the stuff they say and you are no longer under any obligation to respond.

He thanks me and asks if I will need it back.

I've mastered the art, I say. I no longer need it.

He laughs, thanks me and places the invisible shopping bag on his head.

I get up and read a poem for my aunty and wonder if I am the random to all these people that I don't know.

Some of the younger men, tats and evidence of a harder life than their years suggest, get up and say that my aunty was the mum of the neighbourhood on whom they could always rely for a feed and a chat.

I never knew that.

Grief is an ambush predator and I have no idea what or who I'm really crying for and am suddenly grateful for family and whatever time we have.