Geoff and I went to a funeral today. His brother Barry passed away peacefully last friday.
Barry was 71.
Geoff has 8 brothers and sisters and like a lot of big families when they married they all went their own way and they are spread all over the country so we rarely see them. You know what it's like.
Anyway, we had a phone call last week to say that barry had been rushed into hospital as he was coughing up blood and no-one knew why.
When he arrived at the hospital they examined barry and found he had an ulcer on his liver. This had burst causing the bleeding.
They operated and that in itself was a success. However, after the operation barry was put on a life support machine because he was 'not breathing himself' as they explained to us.
We are not sure if they switched off the machine or whether barry passed away naturally.
So, today we met at Chelmsley Wood for the funeral.
It was lovely to meet them but isn't it a shame it takes a funeral to do this?
We all said the same and we passed our phone numbers around and promised to keep in touch.
I hope we do.
Barry was such a big man (6ft 3ins 22ish stone) that his coffin was actually a square box. Not the normal coffin shape you would expect. It took 6 men to carry him.
He loved Pavarotti, two of his songs were played at the service.
It was a lovely service.
Goodnight barry.
God bless.