After a 2 week break for the recharging of batteries, the eating of good food and the consumption of fine wines, life in the NHS is back. What I mean by this is that I am back and tomorrow the NHS will welcome me to work; something I can obviously hardly wait for. My time away has been put to reasonable use as when not doing the above I have been considering the kinds of great blog posts I might come up with in the near future and you will be glad to hear I do have some reasonable ideas. I intend to start these tomorrow, because tonight I am still hanging by a thread to the whole holiday idea despite the bizarre and surreal day spent today attending the funeral of an uncle in law (if it is possible to have one of those). I intend to kick off today therefore with some thoughts about that and move on tomorrow to some holiday related and hopefully NHS / Work related stuff.
My own family (I mean relatives rather than my husband and son) is generated mainly through my mums side and the numerous brothers and sisters my maternal grandparents had. This means that any family occasion, including funerals tends to be large. They have pretty much without exception been cremated rather than buried. It was strange then today to attend a funeral attended by no more than 13 people, which was a burial. These people were all related in some way (directly or by marriage) to the person who had died, and my first thought and concern was that you could live for 77 years and have no friend or acquaintance left in the world who wanted or could attend your funeral. The family are not well off as such and a burial is not cheap, but I personally wouldn’t like the idea of being stored in the ground either below, or on top of others in a communal grave. My final observation on this matter was that sometimes peoples complex lives, and the fact that their wife has a child from another marriage can cast strange effects on the whole proceedings. Perhaps the talk of getting the home of the person valued, even before they have been placed in their communal grave is a little premature and leads to the wrong kinds of thing being discussed at the wake afterwards. As my husband said, it was extremely unpleasant to hear people discussing property and money when they should have been discussing memories of the brother, step father and uncle who had died. Also perhaps spare a thought for the elderly lady who has lost her husband and the love of her life. So that was how I spent the last day of my 2 week holiday. More tomorrow!
