This year I’ve been to more funerals than weddings. Never mind finding yourself squinting at the index of the A-Z, or being frightened at how young George Osborne looks in that photograph of the Bullingdon Club, a definite sign of getting older is when there are more events in your life that require a black suit than a big hat.

In your twenties and thirties, funerals are, normally, a tragic rarity. Many of us lost a friend at school, and at the time these first experiences of death seem enormous, but looking back, they seem a lot like a rite of passage. Being a teenager is dangerous, and rare is the person who has not been touched by a teenage suicide, a car crash, a drug accident, or even, for my teenage daughter’s generation, a stabbing or shooting.

As a rule, however, we do not need to know the rules for funerals until we hit 40. And then, before you know it, you have to organise one. In the past year, I lost my second parent (please nobody quote Oscar Wilde — I am not so much careless as ahead of my time), and in the same 12 months I have been to the funerals of four parents of friends. And the big difference is this: when you go to funerals in your twenties or even thirties you are usually a spectator or supporting actor, but you are rarely the lead. Hit 40 and chances are the next time someone dies, you are in charge.

I have friends who barely seemed capable of looking after themselves who suddenly became the head of their family, instantly looking very grown-up indeed meeting and greeting relatives, liaising with the undertaker and the person who does the flowers, and holding it together — or not — while they deliver readings and eulogies.

And where do they learn to do this stuff? Our generation, for whom it seems like the party will never end? The generation who only seem to find responsibility when we have children, or when our parents become as helpless as kids? We learn it by just copying the generation before us, by mimicking what we have seen at other funerals, because when your mum or dad suddenly dies, the last thing on your mind is doing something “individual”.

For the older generation it was simple: if someone dies, everyone wears black, looks miserable and doesn’t cry too much. At my dad’s funeral, I howled (which is strange, because I was much less fond of him than I was of my mum, at whose funeral I stood in shock rather than tears), and yet I caught looks from people who found my grief annoying, uncalled for or out of place, given that we had not got on. What they didn’t know was that I was crying not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been.

This year I have seen one friend who I think of as fully grown-up howling like a baby at the funeral of a parent, and I have seen another who was completely devastated holding it together in a way that made others in the congregation cry. I have also seen a few stages in between. However, none of it has felt as comfortable as our generation does with a wedding — that other rite of passage that we have made our own. In our society, death is so removed from our daily experience that when it happens, it feels wrong. For the generation that never expected to grow up, death feels like an injustice, rather than a natural end that will happen to us all.

It is, of course, not fashionable to talk about death. In fact, when I see friends coping with the passing of a parent and suddenly being the one who has to make decisions, I realise that they’re doing it in a vacuum. The Victorians had a culture of death — they knew what to look like, what to wear, what to say and, in the case of my Irish forefathers, what to drink.

But for our generation, which insists on individual weddings and bespoke solutions to all of life’s problems, when it comes to arranging a funeral we just have to do what the undertaker tells us. It’s as if we let a wedding caterer arrange the most important day of our lives. Which means that when I see friends organising the funerals of their parents, I feel immensely proud — and I think, God almighty, at last we really are growing up.

MODERN FUNERAL ETIQUETTE

- It is perfectly normal and, some would say, more tasteful to just do what the undertakers and vicars have been doing for years: ie, go for their default setting — restrained, traditional and dignified.

- You could, on the other hand, go new pagan: colourful, informal and celebratory. Or a mixture of both: wicker coffins are no longer the preserve of people who live in tepees.

- In many ways, the Irish tradition of the wake has it so right, as nothing in life makes you crave a stiff drink as much as a bereavement. My mother, who grew up in the Irish diaspora, remembered coffins being used as impromptu bars in south London homes. If you go for this approach, get drunk, get high, get happy, play the piano and dance until you pass out.

- Whichever sort of service you go for, personal remembrances are far better than insincere eulogies from vicars over the bodies of people whose names they can’t remember, when the deceased never appeared in church except for carol concerts. But don’t feel pressured to make a speech, either. Better no speech than an insincere one or something you can’t handle delivering.

- Ex-wives should refrain from attempting to dominate the deceased’s current spouse. The latter get priority, but children from all liaisons should be treated scrupulously equally. It’s just the way it is.

- No photographs or filming. It’s strange that every moment of our lives is filmed from birth, but taking pictures at funerals is still pretty much unheard-of.

- When invited to a funeral it’s almost safer to assume you don’t wear black. Best to check, though. Wearing bright yellow to a traditional funeral is almost as embarrassing as wearing a black suit to one where everyone turns up dressed like they’re going to Bestival.

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