I should have remembered that at the weekend when I got one of the offspring to delve into artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT for me.
He asked it to write 800 words on funerals in my style.
The beginning of the response was the best bit.
I could cope with this, despite its inaccuracy:
"Elspeth McLean, a seasoned journalist for the Otago Daily Times, is known for her thoughtful, often reflective pieces that blend personal experience with broader societal issues.
"While I can’t perfectly replicate her voice, I can certainly aim to capture her style, weaving in anecdote, insight, and a touch of poignancy as she might do when tackling the subject of funerals."
Who knew? But it was all downhill from there.
Anyone reading the title The Last Goodbye: Reflecting on the Role of Funerals in Our Lives hopefully would not have continued to the turgidity that followed.
It was as if we had asked ChatGPT to compile a homily full of pious platitudes to be delivered in a grating saccharine tone by a too-earnest funeral celebrant.
The AI chatbot must have searched for every cliche in the funeral playbook and regurgitated it, winding up with the startling observation that funerals remind us even in our darkest moments we are not alone.
"We are part of something larger — a community, a family, a world where love endures even in the face of the inevitable.
"In this way, funerals are not just a goodbye; they are a continuation.
"A testament to the impact one life can have on many, and a quiet reminder that while death is an ending, it is also, in many ways, a beginning."
The AI chatbot then expressed the forlorn hope "this captures the contemplative and nuanced tone you were looking for, in the spirit of Elspeth McLean’s writing".
No, no, no. Please say it isn’t so.
We gave it another chance.
This time my son asked it for 500 words in the style of this column. It was just as awful.
However, this time it had me telling the funeral story of Mrs McGinty who supposedly lived to almost 100 at the end of my street.
ChatGPT has not been paying attention (or perhaps a subscription to the ODT).
It was unaware of my abhorrence of using the word passed for died.
Her funeral was a small affair in the village church, with a scattering of mourners, but in that "sparsely filled room there was warmth like a well-worn blanket on a cold winter’s night".
"The minister, who had likely buried more people than he had wed, spoke with the kind of gentle authority that comes from years of guiding souls to their final rest.
"He didn’t embellish Mrs McGinty’s life with flowery prose; there was no need.
"Her story was in the creases of her face, in the worn pages of the Bible she kept by her bed, and in the way her garden bloomed year after year despite the brutal southern winters."
Make it stop.
I should have been chuffed this account covered off the after-match function.
As my family knows, a funeral is not a funeral to me without a decent sausage roll.
But, in ChatGPT-land, "the ladies of the CWA [CWI please!] had laid out a spread that would make your heart sing".
Funerals were on my mind because of recent deaths, family-close and friendship-wide, to use Elizabeth Yates’ expression.
I love a good funeral.
The best help us round out the picture we have of the dead person, giving us the chance to learn more about them.
We may appreciate them more or less, depending on how honest tributes are.
It saddens me many families no longer hold funerals, supposedly complying with the wishes of the dead person.
I am trying not to be prescriptive about what should occur at my own, although I have told the offspring I will arise from the coffin in protest at any treacly reference to me winging my way to join my late husband in heaven.
This week, I have two funerals to attend.
Both involve men in their 60s.
The word legendary applies to both, although only one of them is famous.
Their status will not change the grief felt by those who knew and loved them.
There will be tears and laughter and revelations.
I hope there will be sausage rolls.
— Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
