Losing a voice for grief

After breakfast this morning I started work on next week's Morning Prayer video until it was time to walk to Pidgeon's Chapel for the funeral I was to conduct for a woman who I think was of an age to arrive in  Britain in the Windrush era of immigration from the Caribbean. The service was for a family group of about twenty. After the committal at Western cemetery there was no filling in of the grave by the family, as has been customary at West Indian funerals I recalled from my time in St Paul's Bristol. 

The mourners just stood around silently to start with until the son added a few brief prayers of his own, and invited people to recite the Lord's Prayer again with him. Then someone started singing one of the hymns we'd sung at the service, quietly, bur this faded out as few remembered the words. Then someone played a religious song on their phone, too quietly for other to hear, but someone else got the idea and played another song on a much louder phone. It wasn't as if anyone was trying to fill the silence exactly, but more like groping to do the right thing, as something was felt to be missing in the farewell ritual. It was moving in a way. A generation of middle aged people no longer fully in touch with the ways of the community which had raised and nurtured them, losing its voice I thought.

Clare had lunch ready by the time I got back. While I was out, she took delivery of the standard lamp I'd ordered on Saturday, in a neat surprisingly small package. It was quite a physical struggle with painfully rheumatically hands to unpack and assemble, given the way the components were sheathed tightly in cardboard for transport, but I succeeded eventually. Then I went into town by bus to bank a cheque, and buy some special screw fit light bulbs to go in it. The lamp specifications made no sense in terms of what was on sale in Wilko's Queen Street, which I visited, despite the extensive array of bulbs for sale. So what I bought wasn't right and will have to be taken back tomorrow.

After supper I indulged in another evening of watching episodes of series three of Inspector Rocco Schiavone, all linking together an extensive investigation into gambling and casinos that launder money for criminals. It's long been a problem in national border zones, and often cleverly concealed. It's easier to grasp when laid out in a story than when explored in a long and detailed newspaper article.