Overtaking funerals

[Owllady]

Please don't do it. You just look like a twatty twat
Overtaking a hearse reversing into the churchyard whilst the family watch on. Biggest nobber in nobsville
I'm glad that's sorted

STD

Great posts! Explains it all so perfectly.

SDT!

Sorry, I made you into a sexually transmitted disease

I get terrible misanthropy when I read threads like this puts laptop away

The old adage of treat others as you''d like to be treated yourself rings so true here. I have always been respectful when I have seen a hearse. I was very shocked, when both my father and my husband died within a few months of one another, how little this seemed to matter to others. On both occasions the cortège was cut up by drivers on roundabouts and overtaken on country lanes. The drivers of the family cars both times said that sadly it is a common thing to happen - however common it might be, it was obvious that the disrespect shown pisses the drivers off no end..

When it is you in the following car, when it is your beloved husband who is dead, in the hearse in front, your grief is all-encompassing. It just simply isn't possible to 'get a grip' of your 'overtly sentimentality' or even to stop being 'twattish'. Not on that day at least.

Bear in mind that as a passer-by, you can never know the circumstances of how or why the person has died, or who is mourning them. And so it is surely a mark of common decency - humanity - that you are always respectful. Next week, next month, next year it could be you in that cortège instead.

So do I officebairn and I started it there are more important things than being in a rush.
Being sentimental is hardly a crime!

I wish some of the people on this thread could see the grieving people I see every working day. You tell the man who's just lost his wife at only 53 or the son who's burying his mother or the mother who's burying her baby!! To get a grip and stop being sentimental!

I said it before and I'll say it again. Empathy is extremely important

I think the vast majority of people on the thread have been both empathetic and condemed twattish behaviour so don't get too gloomy office - most people are decent and respectful

We stopped most of the town when we had my mums funeral. She had a horse drawn landau. The horses came in an enormous lorry, by all accounts, and most of the town is a one way system. While they were being unloaded the traffic just had to wait. Then when they were being hitched up the traffic was stopped again. Then they had to go round the one way system to get out of town to our house, and then back through it again to the church. We must have stopped a lot of traffic that day. My mum would have roared.

This thread reminds me of driving around Lincolnshire for work - winding single carriage roads. I was pootling along behind a funeral cortege when a bloke overtook me and the cortege. We caught up with him a couple of miles later, stuck behind a milk float karma .

I drove into Grantham with a smile on my face.

I once somehow managed to get between the hearse and the family travelling behind by complete accident and didn't even notice, I have no idea how - i had not long been at a roundabout so can only imagine I was concentrating so much at the roundabout that I saw my time to move and went...it wasn't till a minute or so later that I realised I was behind a hearse, and then a minute or so later it dawned on me there may be people behind, checked and there was! I was mortified!! i was very mortified about it, just a complete accident! I pay a lot more attention to hearses now. I would never do it intentionally.

There's a lovely advert on the tv, I forget what it's actually advertising, where an elderly chap has died. His cortège goes over a bridge over a river and stops. There's loads of fisherman down on the riverbank, he was obviously a fisherman, and they've all stood up and removed their caps. The old lady in the limo sees them and smiles with tears in her eyes. Gets me every time. Makes me well up just thinking about it. I'm such a daft old besom.

"The old adage of treat others as you''d like to be treated yourself rings so true here."

Except if I did that I'd overtake funeral corteges wouldn't I, because I don't feel the same way about rituals and grieving as the majority on this thread. As I said, I wouldn't have cared if someone overtook Mum's coffin. Or didn't wear black.

Does anyone know where the ritual of slow moving corteges, and the no overtaking rule, comes from? And what if they're on a dual carriageway? Are you "allowed" to overtake them then? Would they go on a motorway?

When DMil died the hearse and the limo came to Dfil's to pick us up. They live at the bottom of a private track about half a mile long. The hearse had to turn round in a field entrance and the limo tried for the house. It was awkward. Anyway we all got in and the limo set off behind the hearse. The lady funeral director walker in front. All the way back up the private, completely isolated track. In the rain and mud. Open fields, nobody to see or pay their respects. I always did think it a bit odd.

owllady for you and everyone else here who's buried a loved one.

However...

After reading this thread I fully intend to be "Joy Ridden" to the crematorium.

Faster but much more of nuisance.

A rough guide to the etiquette here

Whataloadofbollocks (how apt :-) ) you have acknowledged that to the majority of people it does matter. It would be the decent, empathic thing to respect that.

MrsDeVere xxx

The reference to the Express and Star made me feel homesick too. Every time we used to go back and visit all our family (we moved from the West Mids when I was younger) I'd sit and read the Express and Star for hours, my nan would always ask me "Looking to see who's died this time?". I just liked counting the number of West Brom and Wolves football badges at the tops of the obituaries

I have very severe IBS. In a flare up I doubt I could even drive, but if I did find myself driving behind a funeral cortege in the middle of an attack, I wouldn't be able to overtake. Pull over into the nearest layby, curl into a ball and cry seems more likely.

I've only made one request for my funeral. No cortege on the way; everyone is to arrive at, say, 10am. The hearse arrives at 10:15am.

Everybody has always said I'll be late for my own funeral, and I am going to prove them right

I live near mrs devere it seems so also encounter many hearses, beyond the graveyard is the hospital/ CDC for us.

I know I could leave earlier just in case but if she's in a meltdown, the baby has exploded with poo and the older ones have lost every conceivable item needed to leave the house I'm sometimes running late despite huge efforts. I must admit whilst I'm the kind of person to stop walking and teach the kids to show respect usually I also will over ride being respectful if it's to dss detriment.

Sorry mrs devere. I posted before reading your latest post, only your early one.

I genuinely feel so conflicted, but I'm also in a tizzy of stress, I try to creep past or cut a back route. Not that that helps but I get so bloody dressed I don't think

Thanks, I felt a bit. Shit and insensitive after reading your last post, it's my biggest fear and I could just imagine what. State i would be in myself if I'm so wet going to appts.

Honestly, my thoughts are with you.

We play in Lloyd park often, not far, if I spy it I will show my children and read her name. I haven't seen threads but I can't begin to imagine, not really words but I've feared it and can't really explain well enough. May Wednesday bring the happiest memories to you