One Wedding and a Funeral

A few days ago I went to a wedding. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome and their mothers were teary. All was as should be and a great time was had by all. It was also the first wedding I’ve been to with a Jewish element (‘mazel tov!’). This made the arrival of a huge plate of bacon sandwiches a surprise but very tasty addition to the proceedings.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

Then two days later we had a family funeral. As you can imagine it was a much more sombre affair and they didn’t have bacon sandwiches in the service. But the place was full of people mentally reviewing their personal histories with the deceased and with the other attendees, some of whom they hadn’t seen since the last family funeral. The crematorium was in a very peaceful rural location with a magnificent view over rolling fields and a lovely walled duck pond. As the preacher preached my eyes strayed to this pond and in particular to a lovely white duck looking over the wall to the water where all his ducky mates were splashing happily around. He looked, bobbed up and down a bit and leaped, just as the preacher asked us to bow our heads in prayer.

Unfortunately his tasty little ducky legs failed him. Or maybe it was his tasty little ducky wings. Or his inability to do the distance / mass / energy required calculations in his little ducky head. Anyhow he missed, slipped off the wall and landed on his fat ducky parson’s nose in a flurry of feathers and indignant quacking.

And so it was that among the solemnity of this terribly sad event there was a little laughter. From me and the Beloved at least.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

These kind of major events with lots of people interacting are goldmines to any writer worth their salt (note to self: stop thinking of bacon). But it’s not just big gatherings like this that should trigger the writer’s imagination. Just keeping our eyes open to everyday events should inspire us too. A brief hug between friends in a coffee shop. A group of children on their first unsupervised trip to the cinema. An old lady struggling to get on the bus with her shopping.

Stories are everywhere. We just have to be open to them.


© Shaun Finnie 2012