Walk Ninety-three – The banks of the Shannon

We were up early this morning to attend the 10 o’clock funeral service at St John’s Cathedral for my mother. I had spent days meticulously planning everything, so I was disappointed that my uncle — who had been given the honour of giving the eulogy — was only preparing his speech from all the stories we had sent him at this late stage. He seemed to be shocked to discover that his fulsome eulogy was going to be put into a loving but nevertheless truthful context by my introduction to his eulogy. However, I had given him the information days in advance, both my siblings and the priest were aware of and supportive of what I had written, and if he chose to leave it to the last minute to read the text I had supplied to him, then he only had himself to blame. As it says in 1 Corinthians 13 — Love is always truthful. The service was wonderful despite his lack of preparation. Father Liam had a marvellous Irish tenor voice and led all of the singing. At the beginning Rachel placed photographs of Mummy and our family on the altar. Every single hymn and reading had been selected for its beauty and appropriateness and all of the readings apart from the Gospel were read by people who knew Mummy. At the sign of peace we all placed white roses on her coffin as a sign of making our peace with her. We all sobbed at various points during the service.
After the service I walked along the river frontage and did this drawing