At eighty-two years of age one must expect to factor attendance at funerals into one’s monthly (weekly?) schedule. Pray to God none of these will involve beloved family members or very special friends. But, even if one is spared such loss, as time with its sharp scythe inexorably reaps its mortal harvest the number of funerals one is obliged to attend grows as one pays homage to those men and women who have peopled the world in which you have lived and loved for so long and who now are gone.
Funerals in the general run are not so much sad occasions as they are solemn occasions at which we can express sympathy to the truly bereaved, pay respect to the life and contribution of the person who has now passed this way forever and feel regret for the loss of a part of one’s own life. At such funerals one meditates on what it is still to be alive
