Does the traffic stop any more?

Most of the obituaries of Edward Kennedy said he did much good. Of course his surname made it easier for him. As an opponent for a seat in the Senate remarked 47 years ago, what if his name had been Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy?
     Kennedy came from an immensely wealthy family. Although he never made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his coffin was not out of place in the presidential library in Boston. The limousines that glistened outside were in keeping with the style in which he and other Kennedys lived for years. The presence of the incumbent president and three of his predecessors served only to underline the sense of occasion. They were saying farewell to a man who, but for a misjudgement or two along the way, could easily have been one of them. 
     Edward Kennedy was a past master in the role of man of the people, but of course he was no such thing. There is nothing ordinary about the Kennedys: they are and were an elite, creatures of power and privilege. And yet there was something very familiar here. The scene may have been 21st-century Boston, but it could just as easily have been the mid 20th-century west Highlands, as if the Atlantic Ocean were not there.
     A funeral was a society event in the west Highlands too, even if there were no television cameras back then to film it. Nobody was famous, except in their own community. Yet everybody got a funeral like Senator Edward Kennedy. The world stood still until the funeral was over. No traffic would move, bar the gleaming black hearse that carried the coffin. All work in the villages stopped, for to have carried on working would have been disrespectful. Respect was paramount, for the living and for the dead. 
     A funeral was not a show for just one day. The scene was meant to stay with you forever, wherever life took you afterwards. Those were formative years, and their legacy can be long-lasting. There are still those who will not overtake a slow-moving hearse bearing a coffin on an alien motorway, because it's disrespectful to the dead. It's something that urban dwellers cannot even begin to grasp.   
     Life was given by God, and its end was a solemn occasion which only the most high could ordain. To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. Such solemnity demanded the reverence of the community. All are born equal in the sight of God, so it follows that all are equal in death also. Be still and know that I am God. 
     Great occasions are underpinned by stillness and dignity. That's why the traffic stopped for Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, and why it will stop for the Queen at some point. But crofters and ghillies and weavers and housewives are also household names in their own communities, and the traffic stopped for them too. After all, many of them were war heroes, like Churchill. 
     Unlike Churchill, these were war heroes from the front line. There were no underground bunkers for them. They were exposed to all the hazards of toxins, machine guns and bombs. Their ships were targets for Nazi torpedoes that all too frequently did find their targets. Every village lost sons or daughters on which the future depended. Many of them died unspeakable deaths.  But their families carried on, sustained by the ethos of sacrifice. There's a lot about sacrifice in the Bible.
     Unlike Churchill, these were not children of privilege and titles and silver spoons. They were born into very little, and by and large they died penniless, even after a lifetime of hard graft. Money was not important. Some of them, maybe most of them, never had a bank account. Their funeral was nothing less than a society event, but without the invitations. Nobody attended so that they would be seen on the TV. They attended out of duty to their society, that bulwark of civilisation which, years later, Mrs Thatcher claimed did not exist. 
     No matter, none of them would have voted for her anyway. They would have seen her as a pioghaid – a female brat – with little regard for anything except money. What kind of funeral will she get? No doubt the state will look after its own, however much she professed to hate it. Politicians and hypocrisy are soul mates.
     Like Mrs Thatcher's grasp on power, Highland yesteryear has long since faded. These villages have changed, forever. They're now full of what we used to call strangers in pre-PC days. The bond forged by generations of toil and hardship and togetherness is broken and its place cannot be taken by soap on the telly. That's what happens when two cultures collide.    
     Even the funerals are different. They are not conducted in Gaelic any more. Why would they be, when many of those present would not understand what was being said? Who knows, maybe even the traffic doesn't stop any more.