Funerals and why they matter so much

I've just come home from playing piano at a funeral in my local church. Yesterday, I attended the funeral of a neighbour who was a close friend of my mother. Right now, my mum's gone to play organ for another funeral at the same church.

When I'm away at university, I often forget that when I'm at home in London I often take up my old role as funeral organist, playing hymns and voluntaries and listening to readings, prayers and eulogies about various people in the local community. I often find that this activity really gets me thinking, and in particular now that I've just returned from my clinical course, I found myself thinking that the exposure to funerals that I get (which I consider a privilege) is really eye-opening and completes the picture of many patients in hospital who are chronically or terminally ill. At a funeral, you can see the infrastructure of loved ones which often exists to care for a patient behind the scenes, which doctors don't see - you get a real feel for a person's character in a good eulogy, and if you're lucky you get a sense of their priorities - what they lived for. You also get a sense of how people react to death and how people move on, how support networks for those left behind re-assess and strengthen.

I guess though that in another way, funerals remind me to always see patients as people. A funeral is often as much a celebration of life as it is mourning, and people are reminded of the uniqueness of the person who is being remembered. At least in death (though perhaps we should do this in life as well!) we try and give thanks for every person, and take the time to consider the goodness of their character and what makes them so special.