Our friend from work, Colin, was a regular commenter on this blog back when Christopher was still alive. He and Christopher used to meet in town for coffee, and their shared sense of humour lifted an otherwise rather bleak situation. For the last few years, however, Colin has been battling cancer himself – an inoperable brain tumour. He and his wife Jane have very bravely been blogging about what was happening – I’ve linked to “Colin’s blog” from mine and have followed it regularly since the beginning.
Recently, however, the inevitable happened. Colin died at St Richard’s Hospice, and his funeral was held this week. I really wanted to go, both out of respect for Colin and to support Jane. But it was the first funeral I’ve been to since Christopher’s, and I was worried that I would find it too much – some of the parallels were really a bit too close. Fortunately, our good friends R and F also wanted to attend, so I arranged to go along with them for some moral support.
The funeral was actually very good in its own way. It was held in Great Malvern Priory, which for those who don’t know it, is a beautiful medieval church in the centre of town. The church was pretty much full, and there were lots of familiar faces there – both current and ex-colleagues. The eulogy was very well done, and even made the congregation chuckle with some reminiscences about Colin’s particular brand of humour. I was pleased that I’d forced myself to go – it was very much the right thing to do.
