...Mass celebrated in a packed St Patrick's, Soho. Tomas Luis de Victoria's Requiem for six voices, sung superbly by the St Patrick's choir. At the back of the church, cards were provided on which we all wrote the names of deceased family members and friends, and at the Offertory we walked up and tucked these into the thick greenery wreathing the altar-rails...
November and praying for the dead means more and more each year as you get older. Long, long ago, it meant praying for the uncle-who-died-in-the-war-before-I-was-born, and then a bit later, year on year, it meant praying for dear grandparents...then adulthood and then the inexorable arrival of middle age, and with it the deaths of those closer still...
Gleaming chalice and glittering candles, a great church filled with people praying, voices saying the Lord's Prayer, a choir singing "Lux aeterna luceat eis Domine..."
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1 comment:
I'm shocked at how many people I have known as equals have died in the past couple of years.
Previously, with the exception of one schoolfriend who died very young, everyone who has died has been a grandparent, teacher, or other person who I knew as an adult when I was a child.
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