Edited 17/08/05

If the world was divided into the diametric bipolar stereotypes of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' then my uncle would have played for the team in white. In reality people are non-monochrome and in the uncut truth his shade of character was not the saintly pure white of symbolic doves or untrod snow. His was the beer wet and nicotine stained white of a man who knew how to enjoy life to excess.

When I was still at the age of eating insects for fun, Mack was working in a small family run bakery a couple of doors away from my home. He would start in the early forgotten hours of the morning to smash away the still silence. The locals excused the sounds of generators, delivery vans and assorted machinery when the scent of fresh baked bread in the air came as compensation. It was a predictable and welcome dawn chorus of birdsong, diesel engines and the yelling of men smelling of yeast and flour. The bakery frontage was a tiny shop; a display point for fragrant loaves, crusty rolls and sticky buns with a dead wasp garnish. It was a drop in rumour mill and chat room, a communication centre for the gossipy housewives. This was a time when everyone knew their neighbours business and dutifully told everyone else about it.

At night Mack would bring life to a series of pubs and clubs; drinking, smoking, playing darts and laughing till tears fell on his wiry black moustache. Snooker, dominoes, cards: all were a great accompaniment to a good joke and friendly company. I always remember him laughing, a cigarette hanging from a lip and a glass held in the air like the Statue of Liberty.

Mack eventually played the traditional game of marriage and procreation, a choice as inevitable as death. His wife Jen was an obese and inadequate slug of flesh in a dress. Her contribution to the family hive was misery and laziness. By night Mack cooked to feed his hungry kids, by day he baked to feed everyone else's. Jen wasted his wage on ill-fitting flowered dresses when the children needed shoes. She pushed her flabby feet into strappy stilettos when the children needed feeding. She took it away and spent it all trying to beautify herself, but you can't make dog shit attractive by painting it rouge.

The supermarkets swept into town and the bakery was bankrupted and closed; a story so common to the point of cliche. The people demanded croissants not crusty cobs, Danish pastry not iced buns - its what they all ate on TV, what they ate on "Miami Vice". Mack practiced a craft utilising methods and recipes perfected over history, but everything was worthless next to the shiny, cheap and surface frills. The community rumour mill was redundant and replaced by magazines of 'Celebrity Cellulite' and 'Stars In Their Cars'. No one knew their neighbour's business and kept their mouths shut about it. Mack got divorced when Jen was caught spreading her thighs for the local half-wit; the kind of guy that screamed in his sleep and stared lovingly at children. The end of the bakery forced Mack to work in a factory, packing machine made meat pies on a production line.

This series of events would cause most people to reach for the scissors, but Mack never let any of this stop him from enjoying a life. He was always the energy of a party and never needed much of an excuse for a drink and a laugh. In the end it was smoking that fuelled the cancer that ate through his body. His last weeks were spent in a hospital bed attached to feeding and breathing tubes. I feel guilty that I never visited him in hospital, but would always prefer to remember him, standing on the wooden bakery steps, cheering and laughing at us kids playing in the garden.

Having died of a smoking related illness Mack's impending cremation blew a wisp of inappropriate irony through the air. Cremation has always tended to be the financially preferred method for disposal of our relatives. It is a soulless 'bargain basement' process for those who want to keep a higher percentage of the inheritance. Relatives queue to cash in their genes when the 'Last Will and Testament' delivers the cheques. They pick a funeral off the peg and throw the cadaver to a burning hole in the wall.

Given the choice, the living would probably prefer to attend the 'worm buffet' than get the ashtray treatment. I imagine my own funeral: A one off inspirational experience to play on the senses. A marble headstone sits shaded under a blossoming tree, carved with verses direct from a mourning heart. A young blonde cries double streams of saline, internally consumed by doubts of life without the blood of her existence. Wailing crowds wave a sea of candles, flooding the surrounding hills of viridian and jade with illuminated faces. A coffin reclines on a polished gun carriage, carved from a single solid oak. Inside my body lies, anointed with scented oils and wrapped in silken bandages. Six grey horses draw the tomb though the parting crowds, painted with spirituous sweat and nervous whitened eyes. Dirge singing winds throw clouds across a blazing sun, shadows move and fade like unrested souls.

I watch the council crematorium building move closer from the car window, a purpose built processing plant barely hiding its function under a veil of aesthetic beauty. It is a small boxy construction with little architectural distinction apart from the tall square chimney that stands seemingly in conflict with the dominant horizontal plane. Concrete walls hide behind red brick cladding and white wooden crosses, a makeover attempt to render impressions of holy temples and faded ideas of spiritual transition. The facade fails to bury resemblances to incinerators used to efficiently burn the bodies of Jews at Auschwitz. A curved driveway sweeps our car past low neat hedges and uniform gravelled spaces. Benches and rose bushes parade name carved plaques of people I probably never met. Two ivy covered porches, symmetrically oppose each other on either side of the building. One entrance, one exit... the perfect verse for a minimalist epitaph.

Untidy groups linger aimlessly around, kicking gravel in the car park. I examine their wistful faces and strain to recognise features changed over time. There is nothing familiar here apart from the sensation of staring at strangers. These are mourners from a previous funeral, all tissues in handbags and unkeepable promises. At the exit, hired ushers offer sympathy and handshakes to the sniffling masses, looking like nightclub bouncers in leather gloves and long dark coats. A shook hand is the same as one thrust up between your shoulder blades; it means goodbye in any language.

Over at the entrance I spot family I forgot I had, but mostly just family I would rather forget. The haggard and lost looking faces seen at weddings and birthdays, with names I never bother to remember. The smells of smoke and death hang thick in the air, though not from conventionally expected sources. Almost every mouth sucks a cigarette and every back bares a charity shop coat. The chimney itself strangely blows no smoke or fumes and I try not to think about it. We wait for the hearse and the funeral drive-thru experience. The relatives shuffle awkwardly in shoes worn in by strangers unknown. They stand with looks of intense concentration, trying to think of interesting things or the right thing to say. Eyes reach contact with relative eyes, followed by facial displays of gravity and anguish. No real emotion exists here, just a cold and nervous social routine. Self-conscious hands hide in suit trouser pockets, coming up for air during frequent wristwatch glances. A bee flies past a brass plaque. A distant siren fades into nothing.

The hearse glides in on an easy silence, reaching stillness from motion in a blended transition. A limousine follows like a skinny sister; mimicking the grace of the heavier sibling but without the burden of responsibility. A shabby miscellaneous train of second hand cars pulls in behind with a cargo of handbags and beer bellies, stockings and suspended sentences. My DNA stands released on the kerb, fragmented and scattered like a metaphorical mirror. In it I see no pieces of myself, no meaning, no answers.

The long coats slide the casket out from the hearse and step a rehearsed, slow and purposeful walk with the polished box set on their shoulders. I visualize them in their night time jobs: punchy doormen for some dive of a bar, adept at muscling people out as well as carrying them in. Here the individual is predictably more compliant and - for a change - distinctively dead before they started work on him.

Voices chatter in streams of rasping syllables; an unrecognisable language to anyone unwilling to listen. Tongues smash against false teeth and chewing gum. I listen for a moment to confirm what I am willingly missing.

"...you're next, then you, no you wait there..."
"...it's Paul, then Sue, then... where's auntie Ag?"
"...it should be Jen first then Sue then Paul then..."
"...Steve, Steve? Where's Steve?"
"...You're next, then me, then Linda, where's Nettie? Nettie!?"

The relatives gripe among themselves negotiating an acceptable hierarchy to follow behind the box. An anxious line forms against the wall like a shoplifters ID parade. Insertions and switches constantly alter the sequence; a volatile string of bloodlines and varicose veins. I hang back and follow in behind once they decide on which spoon to use for the soup.

Inside, the 'chapel' looks as convincing as any fake church ever will. Double glazed UPVC windows hide behind a costume of adhesive stained-glass imagery. Faux vaulted ceilings conceal credibility in white polystyrene tiles and 'oak' MDF beams. Polished wood panelling and hard unrelenting pews strive in vain to furnish an air of authentic emotional warmth. A distant wall stands semi-clothed in post-box red; skirted in a swathe of sedentary velour curtains. Crosses punctuate the empty spaces as convention dictates; wooden symbols on clean white walls like tattoos on young naked skin. This is a blank generic place hung with faith specific symbols. It is a cinema, a theatre, a conference room or space number five with religious accoutrements. As the coffin is laid on a velour covered plinth I realise there is no soul in these walls, just glass-fibre cavity insulation. This is what churches would look like if they were made by Ikea.

The resident perfume of fresh paint and aerosol polish strains through the alien taint of market stall aftershave. Assortments of kin discuss seating protocol, while selected works of Bach are murdered on an organ.

"Pete you should be next to Sam"
"Friends on the left, family on the right...No, the right."
"Isn't that for weddings?
"No, Sue you can go on the right. Where's Ray? Ray, over here!"

I stay out of the debate as my directive is simple: don't sit near the crying, don't sit on the box; everywhere else is reasonably trouble free. I sit on wood and flick through a hymn book for no real reason. Like yesterdays newspaper on the tube train or the bimbo in a bar room; it's just something to do with the eyes and the fingers. In the margin of 'Amazing Grace' someone has drawn an ejaculating cock. A ballpoint trail of blue spatter semen highlights the line:

"Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come."

We follow the usual ritual; an unenthusiastic performance with an old pedestrian script. The man in the dress and crucifix ensemble delivers a speech recalling the virtues of someone he probably never met. He lays it thick with religious overtones; linking stories of Mack with the suffering of Jesus. It follows the standard formula: the priest says stuff, we repeat stuff, sing stuff, say stuff, sing stuff, say stuff - another day, another cadaver.

We sing ancient songs and repeat archaic verses. We mumble antiquated texts about gods, ghosts and creatures that live in the cupboard. I mouth the words in silence; refusing to vocalise irrelevant superstitions. The priest sings out in full lung tonality to shame the gathered passionless mass. Miming was a good idea, but unfortunately one shared by the surrounding crowd. A chorus of empty mouths collectively shape soundless air.

The priest rolls on like life itself and the seated bide time for his last breath. He talks up the 'trinity'; a shady '3 for 1' deal that the crowd refuse to buy. I let his voice fade out to a dull monotone babble like swimming pool screams and underwater conversations. His mouth moves and his eyes read but the syllables leave in unintelligible streams. I imagine being dead and the resulting ritual; my coffin lowered down by the trembling and grieving. I see handfuls of earth and taste the granular soil; rich and warm like geological chocolate. The air is free from religious discourse; no teaching, no moralising, no recounts of ancient magic tricks. The wind carries stories and memories of the past, told simultaneously in layered voices. There is freedom to contribute and freedom to abstain. Individuals visualise in the solitude that closed eyes provide. Some dance some cry, no forced agenda, no etiquette for the dead. It is over, and I am at one with time.

The priest closes his old book; place-marked and spliced by photocopied sheets. The sales pitch is over and the processing has begun. A red curtain draws an elliptical motorised path; surrounding the coffin in a shroud of velveteen. Organ music begins and cues in the sounds of grief from the gathering. Shrieks and tears emerge from the once sniffling and dry. A chorus of motors buzz into the mix; presumably powering the unseen coffin through a hatch in the wall. The organ music ends and there is no encore, no bow from the priest and no applause. Instead he just opens the exit door; a subtle hint to us that the show is over.

The crowds shuffle by, shaking the priest by the hand on the way out. I can't help but feel that this whole thing meant nothing. On a day that should be personal and emotional we go through this sterile ritual, packaged and ordered from the pages of a catalogue. We sing songs and pray to a god we don't believe in and go through the motions because that's the way it's done. I imagine myself in that coffin surrounded by the facade of spirituality. I feel the constriction of chipboard, the 'window dressing' of curtains, wooden crosses and a plastic Jesus. I see the sadness and boredom on rows of oblivious faces. Exactly who was this designed to benefit? Maybe this is why people are afraid to die.

Back outside I kick some gravel and try to avoid eye contact with people I don't want to talk to. Sobbing relatives swap stories of happier days while others race to light quivering cigarettes. The priest moves between the people, handing out sympathy like free samples of microwave pizza. I look around and notice the chimney again. It remains inactive, the only smoke here is being consumed by desperate yellow fingered addicts.

The stillness of the chimney spawns internal circles of repeating questions. I ask them and try to answer myself with limited success. Some kind of smokeless burning process must be involved, but without smoke... why the chimney? I notice the priest distracted in his duties and the still open door we used for an exit. I see the tears and scrunched up handkerchiefs of family and strangers. Searching inside now would be purely tasteless.