Christmas 2012

A walk in the frost

A special family moves

First Nativity Play

What joy to watch the spell-bound wonderment of a first Nativity play! 

My mother's funeral

The day of my mother's funeral is whipped in rain.

A walk along the riverbank by the hotel we stay in and a rainbow lights the sullen sky.  My younger brother and his wife arrive and we set off in convoy.  Four cars; they lead.

We lose our way on the journey to the crematorium.  Steps retraced and we make it there on time.  The crematorium is unlocked, empty and cold as the wind swirls round outside.  The view across the hills is spartan bare.

The party assembles and we sit silent square in a side-room, chairs pinned against the four walls.  The funeral cortege arrives and we go through.

It's finished in a little over ten minutes.  No hymns, no readings, just an address by the Methodist minister who leads the service.  My younger brother has given him the wrong name for our long dead Uncle - beloved Malcolm, the apple of our mother's eye who died unknown in Singapore during the Second World War.

We file out heads bowed to the waiting wind.  Strangely, the service does my mother justice.