Funeral in Edinburgh

Friday 8th February

My sister, my younger son and I all rolled ourselves out of bed at 6am in order to leave at 7 and drive up to Edinburgh for my cousin's funeral. In fact we left about 7.15 in the end, and managed the drive in 4 hours, so we arrived at 11.15; we needed at least 15 minutes to find somewhere to park though, as the church, which is on Dalkeith Road, a main road in the south of Edinburgh, is in a very crowded area with little parking. It was the same church where we had the funeral 4 or 5 years ago for my uncle, father of my cousin. My uncle had been a very active member of the church - he had been a sidesman in fact. We were sufficiently early at the church to meet the minister and some of the older members of the congregation who had been friendly with my uncle and his family.

At the start of the service, the minister spoke well about my cousin Douglas, remarking on his early promise at school; many of the older members of the congregation would have known him as a friendly cheery little boy, as I remember him myself. He left Edinburgh for London after gaining his degrees - I presume this was his PhD as well as his BSc, since after the service we met his PhD supervisor; Douglas and I weren't in touch at that period, so I didn't know much about his life at the time. The minister mentioned his studying in Munich, and another friend commented on his fluency in German. I know he had reasonable French too, and also some Arabic. The minister went on to talk about his being struck down by meningitis, leaving him severely visually impaired, and commented on the way he had made a new and very different life for himself, campaigning for better facilities for visually impaired people. As I said in a previous posting I would give the URL for his blog, it is still to be found at 
http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk
I know I gave the URL for one of his posts in an earlier post here, but I was in France when I posted it, so the URL was .fr when it should have been .co.uk. I confess to being a bit confused by the URLs when using Blogger, but it would appear the URL seems to change according to the country where you are logging on.

We sang a hymn, and one of Douglas's friends spoke about their friendship, telling several typical anecdotes of my cousin. My sister had been asked to read a passage from the Bible, John Chapter 11, the bit about the death of Lazarus, which ends in Jesus saying 'I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.' Then I had been asked to read a Robert Frost poem, 'The Road Not Taken'. After that, we had prayers and another hymn, and it was all over.

Then we all followed the hearse to the cemetery, for the committal.  Douglas was buried in the family plot with his mother and father. It seemed inappropriate to be burying anybody, because it was a such a beautifully sunny day, the sky a clear blue without a cloud and the cemetery very green and bright with flowers. It was very cold though. My son wasn't wearing an overcoat, and found it quite a cold experience. All three of us had to hold the coffin cords. I believe this is a particularly Scottish custom, when friends and family have to hold cords to help lower the coffin into the grave; it's only symbolic, the family don't take the weight of the coffin, the undertakers do that. 

After that we all went to a local hotel for hot soup and sandwiches, which was very welcome because we were all so cold. Like almost all post-funeral gatherings, it was quite convivial and we had a chance to speak to more of the people who had known Douglas in Scotland.

After it was all over, my son drove me to my friend's house (where I am staying for a few days), then he and my sister set off to drive back to Manchester.