A funeral with no cross, no icons, no priest . . .

The room contains a box with a man inside it. A photo of him sits on top and there are many flowers. Behind is a tall wall of large boulders looming up to a long window. Through it, the tops of stark bony trees are visible.

The room is on a peaceful green island in south Stockholm. People have crossed that city or come from nearby to attend on this Sunday afternoon, The room is on a peaceful green island in south Stockholm. People have crossed that city or come from nearby to attend on this Sunday afternoon, filing in for the most part on foot. It’s hard to put a name on the event.

Funeral doesn’t quite fit, ceremony neither. Celebration is closer, but the tears in evidence argue otherwise.

Who are these people? Colleagues. Friends. Family. Parents. Siblings. Sons. Daughter. Wife. Nearly everyone has a greeting for everyone else, if not at first, then a little while later. Whether it has been 25 years since last they met or this is the first time, there is a warm wave of understanding. It’s like a big club.

The club of Dan.

There are no signs of any particular faith. No cross. No icons. No priest. No preacher. Only his framed image. Simple candles burn. There are tender words spoken into a microphone. There are some poems read. Some beautiful cello.

More tender words. And then there is a piece of music. Fractured, discordant and beautifully moving, it is played on a distorted keyboard by its composer, a friend of the deceased. Music is its own description but let’s try: there were peaks and troughs; moments of mapped linear force and soft sequences of lost navigation.

Zig-zag wanderer

Through the medium of an avant-garde requiem, the zig-zag path of a rich life was traced, its 55 years contracted into about 5½ minutes. The dead man would have really liked the tune, his friends remarked a little later over tea and biscuits outside. It was created in his preferred style, a patchwork homage to the deconstructed music he loved all his life.

As the music faded away, the ceremony came to an end. Each row of people got up from their seats and filed past the box to pay their final respects. Some touched it. Others just stared in disbelief and looked at the photograph of the man inside. Tears made focusing hard as many of them laid a flower on the growing pile and walked back down to sit.

A little jug of beer was poured on the coffin and then his closest people gathered around, took hold of the box and carried it out to a hearse. And then the hearse drove away.

Moments of life

People wiped their eyes and got some tea or coffee. After a few minutes, there began a slideshow of the man at various moments in his life – as a child, a teenager, a student, a young man, a father, a family man, a man with his mates. There were numerous scenarios: he is on holidays, playing with his kids, goofing around. In one he has a beard.

Each capture is linked by the kind and intelligent eyes of a cool guy with a warm smile.

The images project onto the white wall, each a lesson from a full life. People take the microphone again and speak off the cuff about him – each is moved, upset, emotional as their voice breaks up or trails off. There are rounds of applause for the sentiments expressed and the anecdotes shared by Amnesty colleagues, friends, his sister.

Dan Grundin is gone but has left his footprint: a family and a room full of friendship.

Jigsaw pieces

Afterwards, secular prayers are said to him as glasses are raised, their contents downed and replaced. Six weeks from diagnosis to death is cruel and barbaric. You’d shake your fist at the heavens. It’s hard to accept he is gone. His grieving – brave sons, daughter, wife, parents and siblings. His saddened pals. His upset workmates. Each retains their own relic of the man: a broken jigsaw piece individually shaped but illustrating the same guy. Those jigsaw pieces held tightly like the memory of the music playing at his farewell. In absence of a shared, defined belief, he lives forever in that music: in there, between the notes.

John Fleming is an Irish Times journalist