Desiderata

As I mentioned in yesterday's blip, today we were at the funeral near Lincoln of my Editor S's cousin's husband Dave who died unexpectedly from sepsis, after only a few days of illness, a couple of weeks ago. S and her cousin have always been very close - almost like sisters - so that Dave has been almost like a brother to S.

We were glad that we'd travelled part way there yesterday evening as that still left a total of almost 300 miles of driving (we're now safely home again).

It was a lovely service (if you can describe a funeral as "lovely" - I think you can) and a real tribute to Dave. There were two highlights as far as I was concerned.

The first was the reading of a poem by Dave's son. The poem was Desiderata (Latin for "things desired") by American poet Max Ehrmann. Dave used to have it up on the wall above his toilet (so that gentlemen could read it while they were standing there...if they were standing there for a long enough time!) although it now hangs on the hallway of their house where I took this photo today. It really sums up Dave's character and attitude to life.

The second was a quote from his 6-year-old grandson, uttered while he was trying to make sense of the whole thing. Their family dog Rommel (dont' ask!) died not long ago after quite a long life; the grandson reckoned that "Grandad is now walking Rommel in Heaven". Children have such a wonderful way of thinking about the world.