I did mean to make you cry

Today, I am making a video. Tomorrow, I will make people cry.

Tomorrow I will be at my day job, teaching high school. These are not the people who will be crying, hopefully. Tomorrow there will be a funeral. The video I am making today will be played at that funeral, and people will cry.

For nearly ten years I have had a side hustle of producing memorial films to be shown at funerals. The family gives me photos, sometimes on a memory stick or shared drive, occasionally, gloriously, in numbered order. Sometimes, like today, I am given a small freezer bag of photos spanning years, sometimes I am given tote bags of pictures still in frames, the designated family member too overwhelmed to make rational decisions. I choose an order to them, add music, apply some Ken Burns effects and titles. For your money you get two DVDs, and I can upload it if you want.

Ten photos per minute of music, I suggest. You don’t want them whizzing past too fast. Just represent their lives and loves, you don’t need to include everything. Try to avoid out of focus pics. That one of Mick in a singlet with a Wild Turkey in one hand and a ciggie in the other? We just need one of those, not five, over several years and events. Died at 50? Too young.

I’ve made hundreds of these, and I have no idea how many people I’ve made cry, certainly it would be in the thousands. It’s OK, I know what I’m doing, I tell them, when they fret that they’ve left out someone. You don’t need everyone in the family, it’s not about them. Think about what your dad/mum/grandpa/brother/son/sister would have wanted. Leave out the unflattering photos, no-one wants the half-asleep, late night hijinks memorialised.

Usually I am not particularly moved when I make them, death is a part of life and if my client lived a good life, it’s apparent in the photos.

Some have made me sad, or angry. The one for a man in his sixties or seventies - only twelve photos were given to me, all from his childhood, in black and white, contributed by his brother. Was there no-one in his life who took a photo of him past 1960? Did no-one cherish him? Love him? Even LIKE him enough to snap off a picture? Or did they all fall away, unknown and uncontactable, unaware of the death of a man they once knew.

The one for a woman who probably lived a good life, it was hard to tell. The photos, chosen by her daughter, included only a half a dozen of her mother. The rest were of the daughter and her family, the daughter’s happy events, multiples of the daughter's children. A life reduced to past motherhood and wifely duties. She was excluded from her own memorial, superseded by her progeny. That one made me cross, burning with righteous rage for all the marginalised women, standing forever in the wings.

I’ve made myself cry. When I morphed five years of school photos, ending when the boy who killed himself was 14. At the family’s request, I put his unlisted video on YouTube so his extended family could watch. Over 1500 views. They showed it at his school.

The babies and children. Twin infants: one died, some of the pictures are clearly postmortem, the family members, other than the mother, uncomfortable and awkward. Rare, in this day and age. The young men who suicide. The young men who die through stupidity and recklessness. Middle aged men who have trucks and beer and smokes and more beer in their pictures. Death through unhealthy living or living it up. The young mother who’s wedding I officiated, who’s funeral I officiated. The young mother who’s daughter goes to school with my daughter, for whom life was too much.

You will get times when choosing the music is a crippling decision and I try to help. A widow - he died of motor neurone disease - wanting something classical. I suggested the Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, then immediately regretted it. “It’s terribly sad” I said. That’s alright, she said, I feel terribly sad. We get a lot of Slim Dusty, for the farmers. Youth Group’s “Forever Young” for the youngsters, Glenn Miller, for the oldies. The vast majority of videos are for the oldies, long lives and interesting pictures, always the obligatory huge family photo. Trips overseas, uniforms: work, the Forces, nurses. I’ve found my own family members in them, my grandfather christening a baby, my mother at a party. Yet to find myself, except in my father-in-law’s.

I keep a weather eye on the dates title card I always add at the end - birth and death, the birth dates circling that of my mother's - 1933. There are fewer before that then there used to be. To my surprise, she wants her own video. A journalist, she was always happier behind the camera than in front of it, so I assumed she wouldn't want her life up on the twin wide-screens in the crematorium. It seems I was wrong, and she has carefully selected the photos she want in it, has agreed on an Edith Piaf song.

Lives are laid bare or strictly edited, people erased from the lives of the dead. “Cut out this person”, or that person. "We don't want him in it". Don’t let the brother know what the sister is planning. Death does not always bring out the best in people. Death can be complicated. Some people say they'll play the video as the guests walk in. I say, don't. Play it at the end. People want to sit and think, they want the space to be able to cry openly. The end is the right time, after the eulogies and stories. When people see the pictures, they can relate them to the person they've just celebrated. Then they weep, then it's OK. It's weird to cry at the beginning, it's perfectly normal at the end. Crying is exhausting and cleansing and normal and necessary.

Now let's go get a cuppa and a scone. I hear the Ladies Auxillary is catering today.