I am not alone in grief, I know this...

I was at another funeral this week.

This is my third funeral in 3 months.

When I turned 40 a few years back a work colleague said that time would pass quicker, weeks would seem like weekends, weekends like a day and I would go to more funerals that I had ever gone to before I turned 40. He was right.

Most recently, it was one of my wife’s uncles. Before that it was one of my uncles, before that it was another of my wife’s aunts. They had all had good lives and that is what counts. My wife’s aunt and uncle were husband and wife and they were in their 80’s. He passed away 4 weeks after she did. My uncle was in his late 70’s. His wife and daughter survive him.

When my mother died in 2003, she was 72. When her youngest sister died, she was 50. My uncle George died when he was 33; he was my mother’s brother. I was 10 years old when he died and that was my first real experience of grief.

A couple of years ago my fathers auntie died, she was 98, and when my grandfather, my fathers-father died, he was 91.

Since I turned 40, along with other members of my family, I have lost three uncles and three aunts, as well as family from my wife’s side. The majority of the relatives I have lost have been to a disease that medical science cannot yet cure, although a cure, it seems, is ‘around the corner’.

I am not alone in grief, I know this, but I just needed to say the things I have said.