Funeral

All the colleagues who could, went to the funeral today. In full uniform. From very early on, we had decided that was the best way to go. Full uniform with tie! And the family really appreciated that.

When we got to the church we had to wait in line for about ten minutes: there were so many people waiting to offer their condolances to his wife and children. He was well-loved in his parish (he was one of the church's caretakers) and it was really nice to see so many people.

A lot of colleagues had commented on the fact that I had been the last one to see him alive (for about two minutes) and I had been fine with it. But when I saw his wife, I must admit I did loose it a bit, because my last words to him had been: 'give my regards to your wife'.

The service started a quarter of an hour late because of the sheer volume of people turning up and then it was completely different to what I knew. I was raised protestant, so the only funeral services I had ever been to had been protestant ones. However, this service was a catholic one and that was in quite a few ways the same, but in other ways so different. It was a nice service though. After the service we walked to the grave yard which was about a ten minutes walk away.

I was home again at 1.30pm. What a way to spend your morning!