I still want to tell you about my summer, perhaps in the next blog. But I must tell you about 2 funerals I took in the last 2 days.
The first was for a wee wifey who lived for her family & loved company. When shopping or out walking the dog she took hours due to many chin wags along the way. She loved to feed her man & sons, their mates & families, but she only picked at food herself. The 5 sugars in her tea energised her. May was 72 when she died & the crematorium was jam packed with folk! Her eldest son Jim managed to read a poem his mum had written for her 3 boys in which she confessed to not giving them as much time in their formative years as she wished she had. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house!
Yesterday morning I woke at 5.15 a.m. in a cold sweat as I realised that at 9.30 a.m. I’d take the graveside funeral of a man (aged 54) I knew nothing about. It was organised by Environmental Health & the contact they’d given me returned nothing. Troubled, I used the same mobile phone number again &, to my relief, learned something of the man who preferred his own company & chose to live alone. Mercifully there were a few friends present at the cemetery & just enough to lower Jimmy’s coffin into his family lair.
What a contrast! I think I visited James in hospital but he gave the clear impression that he didn’t want visitors. However, this experience challenges me not to give up so easily on people living on their islands alone. It’s made me all the more grateful for the many loving relationships in my life, not least the intimate one we share with God through Jesus Christ.
There’s no doubt in my mind that God made us for harmonious, loving relationships: with God, within ourselves, with one another & with creation around us (cf. Romans
. “No man is an island”? Sadly some choose to live on the island of ‘I’.
Minister
