Cousins

I dont often appear in my own blips but today has to be an exception.

I was at the funeral of my Uncle Andrew, for whom I have had the Power of Attorney for the past four years.   Andrew lived to the great age of 99 and 3 months but for the last few years he was absolutely unclear as to where he was and who he was.  None the less he was very well looked after at Lydiafield in Annan where I pictured him just last year (though at that stage his exact date of birth was not properly sourced - it was , as we now know, the 15th of April 1917, not the 11th of April 1918 as had been thought.)   

The funeral at the Masonhill Crematorium outside Ayr was a small event, mostly attended by his farming relatives from Ayrshire but there were a few of us who were from the Russell side of the family - Andrew having married my father's sister, Janet, later on in life though they had met when she worked in the Land Army  ( on his family farm) during the Second World War.

I spoke at the funeral and then a slightly larger group than expected went to a hotel in Ayr for a drink and some sandwiches.   

Just as Cathleen and I were leaving it occurred to me that I needed to get a photograph of my two first cousins on my father's side, Linda and David.  Indeed I went back into the hotel to ask them if they would come out and take part which they agreed to do, with only a little reluctance. 

David was my classmate at school but Linda is a year or two younger.  They are the children of my father's elder brother, John, but I only see them (as the cliche goes) at funerals and it struck me forcibly this afternoon that Andrew's was the last such funeral from his generation.  The next ones will be from our generation.

So it goes.